Market breadth has been pretty poor, despite the S&P500 etc. being up around their respective highs. As a result the Extremely Simple Bottom Detector (ESBD) has signaled 'Minor Bottom' for four of the last five market days (23, 24, 28 & 29).

It's probably not that surprising - it is after all near the end of September which is typically the weakest month of the year on average in a market that's potentially very overstretched and if the October through to end-year is going to be typically good, then one'd want the bottom detector to be calling a bottom or four. Of course if the weakness persists then look out below.

Platy

Boilerplate recap of the current 'extremely simple bottom detector' rules ...

[%NYSE new highs] - [%NYSE new lows] < -11.94% = Minor Bottom
[%NYSE new highs] - [%NYSE new lows] < -25.04% = Major Bottom
[%NYSE new highs] - [%NYSE new lows] < -51.26% = Extreme Bottom

... where -11.94% is basically 2 stand deviations worse than the mean of the NYSE issues traded new highs minus new lows for a Minor Bottom, -25.04% is the mean less 4 standard deviations (of total NYSE issues traded ) new highs minus new lows & -51.26% is the mean less 8 standard deviations new highs minus new lows (all as obtained from the WSJ Market Data resource since 2006). In practice this means a Major Bottom is determined when a little more than 1/4 of the NYSE issues traded are achieving new lows & and Extreme Bottom - which should only occur in the midst of a 'panic' bear market fall - occurs when more than 1/2 of the NYSE issues traded are hitting new lows.

Note: The use of a Gaussian / Normal distribution is a simplification, typically the stock market has fatter tails that the equivalent Gaussian distribution which will lead to a greater number of minor, major (& even extreme at 8 standard deviation) bottoms during times of stress.

The NYSE Issues Traded is available from the WSJ Markets web page or can be obtained by adding the Advances, Declines & Unchanged issues.