Guru Grades

Mark Arbeter: Arbiter of Tea Leaves? (Last Updated 5/9/08)

In this entry, we update our review of the weekly "Technical Market Insight" of BusinessWeek online by Mark Arbeter, chief technical strategist for Standard & Poor's, since early 2003. The table below extracts forecast highlights from this commentary and shows the performance of the S&P 500 index over the 5, 21, 63 and 254 trading days after the publication date for each item. Red plus (minus) signs to the right of specific items indicate those that the market has subsequently proven right (wrong). We conclude that:

• As indicated by his title, Mark Arbeter's forecasting approach is strictly technical, utilizing numerous price-volume indications, chart shapes and sentiment indicators.
• He is frequently equivocal and conditional in his advice, and he changes direction frequently. Recommended actions for investors/traders are often unclear and sometimes difficult to locate within the column.
• Based on the weekly schedule of the column, unless his advice is explicitly long-term or intermediate-term, we assign the near-term performance of the market the most weight in assessing Mr. Arbeter's advice.
• Based on subsequent stock market performance and our judgments about his forecasts for overall stock market direction, Mark Arbeter's bottom-line advice about market direction has been right 55%, which is above average. Sample size is fairly large, lending confidence to this tabulated level of accuracy.

In summary, Mark Arbeter’s technically-based timing advice is above average. Confidence in this conclusion is high.

See Guru Grades for a snapshot of the accuracy of various experts in predicting the direction of the U.S. stock market, including links to evaluations of the commentaries of other individual market pundits and gurus.