Market Timing Experiment – Update

Apologies for intruding into your inbox. I like to keep the Slack Investor blog folly to twice a month. But these are unusual times.

The Slack Investor Market Timing Experiment

Slack Investor started his ‘index-timing’ strategy in 2004 with the ASX IndexUK IndexUS Index. An earlier version of Slack Investor thought that by monitoring the market at weekly and monthly intervals and setting ‘stop losses’ to know when to sell the index. To know when to buy, he used a momentum indicator called the Directional Movement Index.

Although, there was some initial success over the ‘buy and hold’ strategy, the benefits work out to be quite small on a yearly basis. For example, for the Australian Index there is a 1.2% p.a. outperformance for Slack market timing strategy over ‘buy and hold’.

These relatively small gains would have probably been offset by earned share dividends if I was using the alternative ‘buy and hold’ strategy. Market timing works well when there are sustained periods of bull and bear markets and the changes between the two are not too rapid. The short transitions and the speed of market fluctuations in the last 20 years has forced a bit of a rethink on Slack Investor’s timing the markets strategy.

Instead of monitoring the markets monthly, he has been looking for weekly changes as well. He is also taking the current market value and recent trends into account. Slack Investor is a man of routine and he has now decided to keep the experiment going for 25 years (till 2029). After this, he will probably go for the more appropriate Slack Investor method of doing nothing and adopting a ‘buy and hold’ technique for index funds (ASX IndexUK IndexUS Index).

US Index – Slack Investor is OUT

Monthly chart S&P 500 up until Friday April 4 2023 – incrediblecharts.com

At the end of the past week, Slack Investor conducted a review of the Index charts and noted that the US Index price has slipped below the stop loss (thick red line). As the trend is still downward, and the market is overvalued (see below), it is time to get out. As part of this experiment, I will sell my small holding of S&P 500 Index tomorrow and update the US Index page.

US CAPE values – up till the end of March 2025 showing the index is still overvalued (at March 31). The CAPE ratio is above the green zone.

What about the rest of the Slack Portfolio?

Deep down, Slack Investor doesn’t believe he is very good at timing the markets. The bulk of the Slack Portfolio (97%) is not in index funds, but in growth companies – that are taking a bit of a beating at the moment. That’s what the stock market does in times of uncertainty.

Mostly, Slack Investor will be doing nothing. He will try and distract himself from the self-destructing behaviour of Trump. I cannot remember a time where the whole world was so united in its resolve against the USA. Slack Investor knows that good times (and prices) will return. Slack Investor has his Stable Income Portfolio if he needs cash.

The worst thing to do, from a long-term wealth perspective, is to convert shares to cash in a down market – Slack Investor (and other wise investors!)

On the back burner is my project to sell some of the Slack Investor owned companies with a relatively low Slack Factor – and invest more in those with a high Slack Factor.

The Slack Factor – March 2025 End of Month Update

A WordPress AI generated weird image that reassuringly does not make any physical sense.

Reporting Season

During February, most companies report on their progress up to the end of December. There is a similar reporting season in August for the period up to 30 June. Once all the analyst projections for future earnings are in, it is a good time to update the state of play for companies in the Slack Portfolio.

It took a while for Slack Investor to understand that a company could come in with a great report on the business and still, the price of the shares might go down. This is because reporting season is all about expectations. If a company was expecting an increase in earnings of 22% – and they ‘only’ achieved 20%, the share price is likely to get knocked down on the announcement.

As the Slack Portfolio consists of mostly growing stocks with a relatively high Price to Earnings Ratio. The growing stocks usually have high prices as the company’s growth is priced in. These stocks can get punished severely when an earnings target is missed – price falls of 10-20% are not uncommon. But, it is long term results that really count and Slack Investor is willing to endure any short-term pain for a growing company. This period of ‘Trumpenomics’ is an example of such a time.

Slack Investor uses the excellent Market Screener site (requires email registration) to get information from the Financials tab for each company. Analyst information is not available for ETF’s so, only data on the individual companies that are in the Portfolio is gathered.

In the table below, information is listed for the forecast P/E Ratio (PE 2027), the forecast Return on Equity (ROE 2027), the forecast Earnings Per Share Growth (EPSG 2025) (EPSG 2026) (EPSG 2027) and the average of the three Earnings Per Share Growth figures (EPSG AV). There is some fudging of the figures as some of the forecast EPSG figures were unavailable. Also, for some of the companies that are new to profit, their EPSG figures are skewed – I have limited the EPSG (AV) to a maximum of 50. I have ranked the companies in order according to their Slack Factor.

The Slack Factor

What is the Slack Factor? It is well known that Slack Investor likes

  • Profitability – measured in terms of the forecast Return on Equity – ROE 2027
  • Growth – measured as the average forecast Earnings Per Share Growth – EPSG (AV) for the three years 2025, 2026 and 2027.

It is well known that Slack Investor does not like

  • High Price to Earnings Ratios – measured in terms of the forecast Return on Equity – PE 2027. Sometimes, great companies are just too expensive.
ROE is the forecast ROE (ROE 2027), EPSG is the forecast EPSG for the next three years (EPSG AV) and, PE Ratio is the forecast PE Ratio (PE 2027).

So, things he likes go on the top line and the things that he doesn’t like go on the bottom line. This reduces a lot of the complicated information in Slack Investor’s tiny brain to one number. He has made no attempt to scale (normalise) each input into the Slack Factor. It is just a simple way to rank companies with qualities that he thinks are good. The bigger the number, the more likely the company has attributes that Slack Investor likes – profitability, growth and a price tag that is not too expensive. With these traits … surely good things are more likely to happen?

The fast growing Telix Pharmaceuticals (TLX) is a company that Slack Investor is a fan of, and it has a high Slack Factor of 52. The growth dullard Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has a Slack Factor of only 3 – and, is of no interest to Slack Investor.

NameSymbolPE 2027ROE 2027EPSG 2025EPSG 2026EPSG 2027EPSG (AV)SLACK FACTOR
Telix PharmaceuticalsTLX252623070305052
REA GroupREA40329811174234
CodanCDA19232023182025
Alphabet (US)GOOGL15251214161423
Supply NetworkSNL29382314151723
MegaportMP15019-9160405019
Pro MedicusPME115534042303717
WiseTech GlobalWTC42203238343517
Technology OneTNE48341820191913
CSLCSL20181215161413
Goodman GroupGMG1811 34122012
Coles GroupCOL1832-2175712
RPM HoldingsRUL38181025402512
XRF ScientificXRF20181711111312
CAR GroupCAR28153518122212
ResMedRMD2023910111012
WesfarmersWES24333139811
Nick ScaliNCK1529-282914510
CochlearCOH342515716139
Macquarie GroupMQG15136188119
Botanix PharmaBOTNotRankedNotEnoughInfo

Over the next quarter, I will try and sell some of the Slack Investor owned companies with a relatively low Slack Factor – and invest more in those with a high Slack Factor. For homework, using Market Screener, try to work out the Slack Factor for some of the companies in your own portfolio.

March 2025 – End of Month Update

The current ‘Trump Slump’ in stock prices can be attributed to the largest upheaval to global trade since the Second World War – Thanks Donald! All followed markets fell this month. The ASX 200 down 4.0%, the FTSE 100 down 2.6%, and the S&P 500 down 5.8%. For now, each Index remains above their stop losses. Slack Investor remains IN for the FTSE 100, the ASX 200, and the US Index S&P 500.

Slack Investor took the opportunity to tighten up his stop loss values for the FTSE 100 and the ASX 200. On the UK Index chart below, by drawing a black wavy line under the monthly minimum values, it can be seen that some new ‘higher lows’ have been established. It made sense to move up the stop loss to the most recent ‘higher low’.

Monthly price chart for the FTSE 100 – incrediblecharts.com

All Index pages and charts  have been updated to reflect the monthly changes – (ASX IndexUK IndexUS Index). The quarterly updates to the Slack Portfolio have also been completed.