How to know the bull top and bear bottom

There are many ways to predict the bull's top and bear's bottom in investment market. And normally, an investor will cross reference with different methods to determine the market trend. Technical analysis is a useful tool to provide indication of a possible top or bottom too.

I observe the market reaction to news in order to know the current position of the market in a long term trend. This simple method is useful for long term cycle, but not enough for short term cycle.

The market sentiment always react to news, announcements, happenings, rumours, etc. We can divide them into good news and bad news, and we can grade the news into 5 degree of impact or intensity.

Here are some examples of good news: good quarterly financial result, good industry outlook, positive announcement, new major development, good dividend payout, bonus issue, buying of shares by big investor, encouraging government policy, etc.

Here are some examples of bad news: poor quarterly financial result, poor industry outlook, negative announcement, fraud case, natural disaster, warfare, economic downturn, high inflation, substantial selling of shares from major shareholders or directors, discouraging government policy (such as impose of heavier tax), etc.

And here are some examples of news that can be viewed as good during bull market, but viewed as bad during bear market: rights issue, merger & acquisition, major investment in new area, increase in borrowings to fund rapid developments, etc.

And here are my observations:

During the bull market, majority investors will treat:

• good news as reason for the price to break another record high
• no news as if good news is coming soon
• bad news as if no big deal (ignored)

And when it is near the bull's top, good news find difficulty to push the price with greater intensity, and the market somehow realise and react to bad news.


During the bear market, majority investors will treat:

• good news as if no big deal (ignored)
• no news as if bad news is coming soon
• bad news as if tomorrow is judgement day

And when it is near the bear's bottom, the damage from bad news reduced to minimal, and the market starts to realise and react to good news.

And remember, we have to divide the news into 5 degree of impact. The market might not react significantly to 3rd degree of impact, but still react vigorously to 5th degree impact. When it reaches the bear's bottom, even high degree bad news such as recession throughout the whole region will be treated as normal; and when it reaches the bull's top, high degree good news such as 300% profit growth will also be viewed as normal.

If you can observe and predict the bull's top and bear's bottom, then you can apply your investment strategy to "buy low and sell high".

You need double effort to gain back any investment lost

I wrote about withdrawing EPF money for investment purpose recently. That was due to a friend of mine who is agent to a unit trust company has approached me to do so. Is now a good time to take out your EPF savings and invest in unit trust? I don't think so.

As you can see that over the past few months, there are many uncertainties in the share market that have affected the investors sentiment. The oil price as well as many commodities prices are sky rocking, inflation is accelerated, people spending with more caucious, even the local political environment has become pretty unstable since the last election. As a result, we can clearly see that the unit trust funds are sinking, especially those with high proportion in the share market.

Although I agree that investing in unit trust funds might have a better chance of getting better return than EPF in the long run, but it is definitely not a wise choice to invest on something that is still in the sinking momentum. We have to wait for a better time to switch our hard earned money from EPF to unit trust. Even in the worst scenario, EPF will still pay us a 2.5% dividend, but how much probability do you think that your unit trust will perform better than EPF return by the time they declares for the next dividend? I see more chance of losing money in unit trust funds now than making any money in the short term.

And yes, you can opt for a unit trust fund which invests in the bond and money market. But unfortunately, I don't foresee the return in those unit trust to be better than EPF dividend payout, at least not in their past few years record.

We have to remember the fact that, for any lost we incurred in investment activity, we need double the effort to gain it back. For example, if you purchase a unit trust for RM1.00, and its value drops to RM0.50, that is a 50% lost. You will require the unit trust to gain back 100% from RM0.50 to RM1.00 in order to "break even" your initial investment. That might take you a lot of time, probably a few years to drop from RM1.00 to RM0.50 and regain back to RM1.00 again, and yet you are still not making any money. If you leave your money with the EPF fund, you might probably have earned more than 10% already for the same period of time.

I will seriously think about withdrawing my EPF savings for investment, when I feel that the right timing has come. Now is definitely not the right timing, although it is a right timing to invest directly in share market by picking those high DY, zero debt, good profit growth and low PE companies. You will notice that they have low PE probably because there is no or very limited unit trust fund has invested into them yet. I believe they are already in the radar screen of the fund managers. When the market sentiment become better, the fund managers will buy and push up their stock price, raise the PE to above 10. And when the fund managers start to regain the courage and confident to invest agressively again, that could be the right time we put our money in their trust.

Unit trust agents always like to mention a practice called "dollar cost averaging". In my opinion as an experienced investor in the share market, the "dollar cost averaging" can only be used if you are optimistic that the price has been bottomed up, and there is more tendency for it to rise rather than continue on sinking. If you don't feel that the sinking effect will stop soon, you should not dump in more money with "dollar cost averaging". In fact, you should seriously consider "cut lost" instead. This is because you need double the effort to gain back any investment lost you made. Be smart, when dealing with investment.

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