In terms of the market, 2022 was a year many want to put in their rearview mirror including the NASDAQ, which finished down over 30%. So far in 2023, we are seeing the index pick itself up off the ground. Starting the year with five consecutive positive weeks and up more than 10% YTD. Is this just a bear market rally or does this move have sustainability? With hostility increasing between the bulls and the bears let’s evaluate both sides.

The Bull Case (see above) – Starting with price, you can see the follow through in a bullish RSI divergence, where price made new lows in October, but RSI managed to make a higher low. Market breadth has also been supportive. In just 28 trading days the index made more consecutive days of net new highs than all of last year combined. This rally also managed to get price back above the 40-week simple moving average (SMA), which followed through into the percentage of stocks above their 200 day SMA reaching levels not seen in over a year.

The Bear Case (see above) – 2023 has been a promising start for the NASDAQ, but logical skepticism remains. During this rally we have yet to see the September and May highs of 2022 eclipsed and less than 50% of stocks in the index are above their 200-day SMA. Although we are back above the 40-week SMA, the slope remains negative. Lastly, the concentration of growth exposure in the NASDAQ lends itself to relative underperformance to the broader market when headwinds around growth surface like higher interest rates, which many believe are here to stay.

Intermarket Implications (see above) – The two market wrecking balls this past year started 2023 off slow, aiding in the most recent rally. We are now seeing the dollar ($UUP) and yields ($TNX) finding support at the same time the NASDAQ struggles to get through resistance at that pesky 12,000 level. 

The Verdict – I remain cautiously optimistic, but until we get above 12,000 (September and May 2022 highs) or below 11,500 (downtrend line and 40-week SMA) I think the bulls and bears will continue fighting. Patience will pay and the implications of the dollar and yields cannot be understated. 

As technicians the area we focus on primarily is price action. While that is the most important variable, time acts as another variable that one can incorporate in their research. It is important to note that just as the market ebbs and flows, there are certain cycles that are always at play. The identification of these cycles, based on your preferred time frame, can help understand their impact on the market.

The Time Cycles of Volatility determined from Volatility’s past behavior have pretty much been a leading indicator of its turning points going forward. 

This Chart is not India VIX, but IndiaVIX/NIFTY ratio. Though the chart difference between India VIX and IndiaVIX/NIFTY ratio is only apparently subtle, it shuns out all the noisy moves of India VIX that failed to translate into any credible inverse NIFTY’s movements. 

Back in 80’s and 90’s, several Technical Analysts came up with the concept of Cycles in financial markets on various instruments and the books were then flooded with them. The Time Cycles themselves have been questioned several times for their efficacy. Primary question raised on them being, how can Cycles, so static, work on Markets, so dynamic? The dynamic part of these Cycles is that one may never be able to project the magnitude of impact that can happen during the turning points of these Cycles. 

Time Cycles are never measured Peak to Peak or Peak to Trough or Trough to Peak, they are always measured Trough to Trough. They are drawn through Sine Waves. 

In the post-2020 era, IndiaVIX/NIFTY ratio is witnessing two concurrent Time Cycles of varying timeframes. A larger Cycle (Blue) is of 89 Days, coincidentally also a Fibonacci number, and a smaller Cycle (Orange) is of 46 Days. These Cycles generally stay intact till some major event, and post that new cycles emerge. Their life is only till the next significant event.  

The smaller Cycle is expected to make its Trough in coming March (vertical line) and both the Cycles are then expected to confluence their Troughs in May.  

While this makes a strong case for increasing complacency during their Trough phases and therefore, risk in Markets, these Cycles are at best combined with price studies for benefitting from the larger turns in the Markets.