Watch out for the Hindenburg Omen

I never heard about this technical indicator, I thought I would bring it to your attention.-Lou

Watch out for the Hindenburg Omen

By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch

ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- According to a little-known technical indicator known as the Hindenburg Omen, the risk of a stock market crash right now is high.

Should we pay any attention to this indicator?

"Yes" is the answer from quite a few of the investment newsletters I monitor. Indeed, in recent days so many advisers have referred to the warnings that the indicator is emitting that investing blogs are all abuzz.

And, naturally, more than a few of you emailed me to ask that I devote a column to it.

Let me start by reviewing the Hindenburg Omen. The core idea behind it is that it's bearish whenever there are a large number of both new 52-weeks highs and new 52-week lows on the New York Stock Exchange.

From what I can tell, it was created in the 1970s by a fellow named Jim Miekka, who was editor of a newsletter called the Sudbury Report. Credit for christening this indicator the "Hindenburg Omen" goes to Kennedy Gammage, who used to edit a newsletter called the Richland Report.

Why would a large number of both new highs and new lows be bearish? Peter Eliades, editor of the Stockmarket Cycles newsletter, recently provided an answer: "Under normal conditions, either a substantial number of stocks establish new annual highs or a large number set new lows - but not both." When there are high levels of both, "it indicates that the market is undergoing a period of extreme divergence... Such divergence is not usually conducive to future rising stock prices. A healthy market requires some semblance of internal uniformity, and it doesn't matter what direction that uniformity takes. Many new highs and very few lows is obviously bullish, but so is a great many new lows accompanied by few or no new highs. This is the condition that leads to important market bottoms."

In terms of genealogy, the Hindenburg Omen is a descendant of an indicator called the High Low Logic Index, which Norman Fosback, editor of Fosback's Fund Forecaster, devised in the early 1970s. According to Gammage, the Hindenburg Omen is also "derived from a New High - New Low indicator developed by Gerald Appel many years ago." Appel, of course, is the editor of the Systems & Forecasts newsletter.

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