If you are the kind of person who considers him/herself an investor not a speculator, and who would prefer to make market BUY/SELL decisions years apart, rather than days apart, then this page is for you.

The Field System has long-term signals for buy-and-hold investors. They are simply: BUY on the declaration of a BULL market and SELL on declaration of a BEAR market. The previous declaration of a BULL market was 12/16/94 (S&P500 close 458.8)(of course we were not on-line then!) and the previous declaration of a BEAR market was 9/21/2000 (S&P500 close 1448.7) (see Table 1 below). If you had bought with 100% of your funds on the first date and sold all on the second date you would have a return of about 215.8% (using the S&P500 index value as a "price" on those dates). That sounds like a large increase, but over a  5.75 yr period, that is 22.1% per year, compounded (see note 2 for sample calculation); still a very good return. The table contains a three-month mis-call (8/94 to 11/94) and a one month mis-call (10/04 to 11/04) which just shows that not every rule is 100% perfect. The one-month mis-call actually resulted in a profit, and the three month mis-call caused a slight loss. The time-weighted ("blended") average of all signals in the table is 15.5% average gain per year for the time the investor is in the market. The result of buying and holding over the period 8/27/82 to 1/27/03 (20 yr 5 mo) is 11.5% gain per year. A 25.55 yr holding period (8/27/82 to 1/31/08) returned 9.8% average. Buying and  holding over shorter periods of 15 yr, 5 mo, 10yr 5 mo, and 5 yr 5 mo are even worse. These figures are 3%, 0.6% and -1.%, respectively (see Table 1 below).

      Isn’t this simple? Look at the price you pay for buying and NEVER selling! If you have done that, you already know the painful cost, you don’t need me to tell you. See what a great deal of loss you could avoid with this simple SELL rule. The loss in S&P500 since the BEAR market signal is 42% (written 9/27/02). If you sold on 9/22/00, your loss from that date would be zero, the date of the last BEAR market declaration.

   (written 12/30/02) The next declaration of a BULL market will come when the 200 day moving average (200DMA) of the S&P500 stops going down and turns up, while simultaneously the S&P500 is above the 200DMA moving average line. I believe we will get a BULL market signal before April, 2003. The 200DMA line will turn up when current prices are above those from 200 days ago. Since we had a major market low in July and a test of that low in Oct 2002, I expect the upturn to occur before 200 days from July, 2002, or in April, 2003. The only reason this will FAIL to occur is if we plunge below the Friday-closing S&P500 value on 7/19/2002 (847.8), the "July bottom" (Friday-close basis). The last BULL market signal occurred 12/16/1994, so this is not something that happens every day! In the Field long-term system you may BUY with 100% of your funds on the BULL signal and hold until the next BEAR market signal (hopefully years after that) occurs. We prefer to buy exchange-traded funds such as SPY and QQQQ rather than individual stocks, since these are not subject to the turmoil caused by NEWS on an individual stock (trademark notices below).

      (revised 5/30/03) We have added a Table 2: Nine Month Moving Average of the S&P500 so that you can see the progress, or lack of same, toward the next BULL signal. Two hundred business days is 40 weeks, and nine months is about 40 weeks. The first column is month end date. The second is S&P500 average on month end date. The third column is the nine month moving average (MA) of the most recent nine month's closing prices of the S&P500. When the numbers in the third column stop decreasing month after month and finally rise, and when the S&P500 is above that average number, a new BULL market will be declared (but we will use weekly rather than monthly data to make the call-see next). As seen in Table 2, the average turned up 4/30/03, consonant with our declaration of a new BULL market on 4/25/03, as determined by the weekly data.
The weekly data are now becoming more important than the monthly. There is in the weekly data (Table 3), an 847.8 on 7/19/02 that has now been exceeded. We use the Friday closing values of the S&P 500 for this study. Counting 40 weeks from 7/19/02 ("the July bottom" of a previous paragraph), we see that since the S&P500 is above 847.8 on 4/25/03, then the 200DMA has turned up. The average of the last 40 weeks is about 880. The S&P is above 880 on 4/25/03 (Table 3), so a new BULL market can NOW BE DECLARED!
      (written 5/30/03) We have now gotten past the mini-critical date of 5/30/03, when the S&P500 needed to be above 941, and it was. The next seven weeks is a minor caution, in that, if we have a major decline, the BULL market could be in jeopardy. I will provide more details if we get a decline that comes close to trouble.
       Table 4 is a weekly list of recent S&P friday closes and the 40 wk moving avg (40WMA) which shows that we are currently below the 40 WMA line but the 40WMA line continues to increase. We have been below the line for five weeks. Counting from last entry in the table back 40 weeks you will see that we are dropping S&P closes in the 990 range, and we are a long ways from that range. In other words, for the 40WMA to turn down, we would have to be dropping S&P values that are HIGHER than today's price.  The important point is that the 40 week and 9 month MA lines are advancing. Several talking heads on TV announce that we are below the 200DMA (implying big trouble ahead or end of BULL market??, they never say)), but they never say the important point I just made. To get a BEAR market signal we need BOTH to be below the 40WMA line and for the 200DMA line to turn DOWN.
      If you are a student of this method, I want to make very clear that we are talking about the 200 BUSINESS day moving average (40 weeks) and not the 200 CALENDAR day average. Our work over the decades has shown the 40 week average gives the best signals (fewer mis-calls), not the 29 week CALENDAR average! Often commentators do not make clear which they are talking about.

      We did not invent the idea for this Long-term System, but I do not remember where I first saw it, decades ago. It may have been the old Dick Fabian "Telephone Switch Newsletter", now published as Maverick Advisor. I believe the S&P company also used a similar system to flag the market as BULL or BEAR on their "Daily Basis Stock Charts"; I am not sure whether these charts are still being published or not. And it may have been Joseph E. Granville's 1960 book "A Strategy of Daily Stock Market Timing for Maximum Profit", which had more than just Daily methods. Since the initial idea from years ago, we are responsible for all the declarations and calculations since.

NOTES:
 NOTE 1:
Two Hundred Day Moving Average- A 200 day moving average (40 weeks) is the value of the S&P 500 index averaged over the most recent 40 weeks (using the Friday close for each week). So every week a new moving average is calculated, dropping the value 41 weeks ago and adding the latest week’s value. TOP

 
NOTE 2: 5yr 9 mo=5.75 yr
      458.8*(1+x)^5.75= 1448.7
      solve for x
      x=0.221 or 22.1% compounded

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