Looking back at historical data, the probability of a move greater than 5% to the downside after a confirmed Hindenburg Omen was 77%, and usually takes place within the next forty-days. The probability of a panic sellout was 41% and the probability of a major stock market crash was 24%. However, the occurrence of a confirmed Hindenburg Omen does not necessarily mean that the stock market will go down, although every NYSE crash since 1985 has been preceded by a Hindenburg Omen.
Because of the very specific and seemingly random nature of the Hindenburg Omen criteria, it is possible that this phenomenon is simply a case of overfitting. That is, if one backtests through a large data set and tries enough different variables, eventually correlations are bound to be found that don't really have any predictive significance.
However, the fact remains that out of the previous 25 confirmed signals only 8% (two) have failed to predict at least a mild (2-4.9%) declines.
The effects of the recent merger of the NYSE with Euronext may have an effect on future predictions. |