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* AUGUST 13, 2010, 6:50 P.M. ET
Wall Street Wonders If 'Hindenburg Omen' Just A Lot Of Hot Air
By Steven Russolillo and Tomi Kilgore Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Forget about Friday the 13th. Many on Wall Street took to whispering about an even scarier phenomenon: the
"Hindenburg Omen."
The Omen, named after the famous German airship that crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937, is a technical indicator that is said to foreshadow not just a bear market but a stock-market crash. Its creator, a blind mathematician named James Miekka, said his indicator is now predicting a market meltdown in September.
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Miekka came up with the Omen in 1995 as a way to predict big market downturns, creating a formula that parses over data like 52-week stock levels and the moving averages of the New York Stock Exchange. He said the Hindenburg Omen's name was coined by a fellow market technician, Kennedy Gammage, when they found out the name "Titanic" had already been taken.
The confluence of data used by the Omen was officially tripped this week. There were 92 companies that hit 52-week highs on Thursday, or 2.9% of all the companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. There were also 81 new lows, or 2.6% of the total. Each number must exceed 2.5% for the Omen to occur, according to Miekka.
Other criteria include a rising 10-week moving average for NYSE and a negative McClellan Oscillator, a technical indicator that measures market fluctuations. Miekka said the appearance of one signal is usually an indication of a market top, but the Omen becomes more accurate when there are two or more close together.
The Omen was present at every market crash since 1987, but has also occurred many other times without an ensuing significant downturn. Market analysts said only about 25% of Omen appearances have led to stock-market declines that can be considered crashes. ............
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100813-713384.html