It is a great dream of most investors to be fully invested at the bottom of the next Bull Market – a Bull Market being a long upward run in the prices of stocks or commodities.

Your financial planner will probably tell you it is impossible – and your stock broker will probably just tell you to keep buying, advocating a long-term approach. But what if there was a way to know that the next Bull Market in stocks was looming, and to know when to be fully invested?

This is where the unemployment rate comes in. Unemployment doesn’t rise too much if the stock market and economy are going well – at least according to economist Ken Fisher in his book “The Wall Street Waltz”. When people are in work, companies are making profits and both are spending their hard-earned dollars, the stock market will usually follow suit and rise with it.

But the opposite is also true – if less people are working (unemployment up), then they are also spending less, companies are making less profit, and the stock market will be in a decline.

Therefore Ken says, if you are watching the news and unemployment figures have risen by more than 1 percent, then the start to a new bull market might be right around the corner. It won’t pick the exact bottom of the market down to the day, time and value, but a rise of over 1 percent will get you in the ballpark to be ready when the next bull comes along.

To put it more simply – major stock market lows over history have never happened without first a rise of at least 1 percent in unemployment. Let me give you an example: Stock market prices had been falling for two years since 1968, when unemployment rose sharply as 1970 started. In May of that year a new bull market began. And not just in 1970, but in every other major low since.

There is one caveat however – the unemployment rate is not as reliable when it comes to predicting peaks in the market. This is because the stock market actually leads the over economy anyway in that regard. But Ken did find that a major peak in stock markets rarely happened without unemployment falling (jobs up) for two years.

Why is this information important? Well next time we are in a bear market and unemployment rises by more than 1 percent, we’ll know it’s time to get ready for a new bull market – it could be just around the corner.

Get free research on stock market trends, at Dave McLachlan’s site, www.asxmarketwatch.com.

categories: stock market, investing, trading, finance, wealth