Author Archives: Brian Johnson

About Brian Johnson

I have been an investment professional for over 30 years. I worked as a fixed income portfolio manager, personally managing over $13 billion in assets for institutional clients. I was also the President of a financial consulting and software development firm, developing artificial intelligence based forecasting and risk management systems for institutional investment managers. I am now a full-time proprietary trader in options, futures, stocks, and ETFs using both algorithmic and discretionary trading strategies. In addition to my professional investment experience, I designed and taught courses in financial derivatives for both MBA and undergraduate business programs on a part-time basis for a number of years. I have also written four books on options and derivative strategies.

Commodity Bloodbath in 2015

Posted on December 31, 2015 by

In July 2015, I wrote a post on the linkage between commodity prices and stock prices during five periods of declining commodity prices in the past 35 years: 1980-1982, 1984-1986, 1997-1998, 2008-2009, and 2014-201. I concluded that four out of … Continue reading →

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U.S. Manufacturing Sector Now Shrinking

Posted on December 31, 2015 by

In November of 2015, I reported that U.S. Manufacturing was at Recession Levels, but the news has gotten worse. The Manufacturing sector is now shrinking.

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Global Trade at Recession Levels

Posted on December 31, 2015 by

My last two posts focused on bearish divergences in the equity markets, but there are several fundamental factors that are equally bearish. The following article focuses on global trade. 

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Transportation Sector – Ominous

Posted on December 30, 2015 by

I wrote an article yesterday about the growing divergence between the junk bond and equity markets. There is a second divergence within the equity market that is equally ominous.

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Junk Bond Meltdown

Posted on December 29, 2015 by

I initially discussed the implications of widening junk bond spreads in a prescient September 2015 post titled “Widening Junk Bond Spreads: Bull Market in Peril,” which was inspired by a MarketWatch article titled “Junk Bond Market: Danger Ahead,” written by … Continue reading →

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Seasons Greetings From Trader Edge – 2015

Posted on December 23, 2015 by

Seasons greetings from Trader Edge. It has been a crazy year for me personally. We lost our 12-year old White German Shepherd early this year due to complications after surgery. Our 9-year old Pembroke Welsh Corgi had emergency surgery the … Continue reading →

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Recession Model Forecast: 12-01-2015

Posted on December 22, 2015 by

The following article updates the diffusion index, recession slack index, aggregate recession model, and aggregate peak-trough model through November 2015. In January 2015, I created a new explanatory variable for a market-based indicator; I added two new explanatory variables in … Continue reading →

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Gold Still Overvalued by 23.5%

Posted on December 6, 2015 by

I read an interesting article by Neil Azous in the December 2015 issue of Modern Trader (“Has the Golden Moment Passed?”) that inspired me to do some further research into modeling gold prices. The resulting research greatly enhanced my understanding … Continue reading →

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