The Monday Morning Playbook: Week of March 10, 2025

Good morning,

Counting the 2022 bear market and the current pullback, there have been 4 drawdowns of at least 7% in the S&P 500 since Brown Technical Insights started in September 2022.

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning know that when markets get crazy, things get real simple around here.

We break out the correction check list.

A dirty little secret about investing is there is no magical sell signal. No matter how many studies you run, you won’t find one that says, “10/10 times, the S&P 500 was lower 12 months later”.

Calling tops is a tough business, and realistically the bearish signals show a market with below average returns and positive 40-50% of the time 12 months later (vs. the usual 75-80%).

Bottoms on the hand, are a lot more reliable and they tend to follow a predictable pattern.