
My core market health indicators weren’t impressed by this week’s rally. All of them fell in the face of a rising S&P 500 Index (SPX). This isn’t an encouraging trend. During the month of July as the market traded sideways in a 5% range my core indicator categories have broken down one after another. This week my measures of market strength fell below zero which is changing the allocations in the core portfolios. The new allocations are as follows. Long / Cash portfolio: 20% L0ng and 80% Cash Long / Short portfolio: 60% Long and 40% Short the S&P 500 Index Below is a chart with the portfolio changes over the past year. Green is adding exposure / reducing a hedge. Yellow represents adding a hedge or raising cash. Red represents a market risk warning where I use an aggressive hedge (with put options or a product that benefits from rising volatility). Fortunately price hasn’t broken yet and as a result market participants are comfortable keeping core measures of risk