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Jeffrey Hirsch
Editor-in-Chief, Stock Trader's Almanac

Decoding the Bear Market: Frank Cappelleri's Technical Insights with Jeffrey Hirsch

📅 Apr 22, 2025 CrossCheck Media 56 MIN 1199 VIEWS 279 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS
Decoding the Bear Market: Frank Cappelleri's Technical Insights with Jeffrey Hirsch 📉🔍 📉 Is a bear market on the horizon? In this must-watch episode of WealthWise, host Jeffrey Hirsch, Editor-in-Chief of The Stock Trader’s Almanac, sits down with seasoned market technician Frank Cappelleri, CFA, CMT—Founder and President of CappThesis. With over 25 years on Wall Street at firms like Instinet and Smith Barney, Frank shares invaluable insights into the technical signals and historical patterns that suggest market turbulence ahead. 📊 💬 What You’ll Learn in This Episode: ✔️ Key technical indi...

Questions asked in this interview

12
  1. 12:59So, I think having those different roles there, I kind of understood the life cycle of a trade, if you will, right?
  2. 17:09Like that, you just, you don't see that in a bull market, and you don't see the types of things that help a bull market, meaning that bullish patterns form and you get clean breakouts. Right?
  3. 19:10So, you know, we could be off the low. Who knows?
  4. 22:49Again, and then a few other small ones, and then at that point, you started to see bearish patterns develop, but then it was like, you know what?
  5. 29:55So I think I'd be very surprised if we're right back to new highs after what we've gone through, right?
  6. 32:56Right, so it's funny, I thought this was like a really important one last week, and then we have a 9% up day this week, right?
  7. 34:13... the bottom portion of that chart that shows the rate of change for the week, and even though some of these marked lows, you can see how exaggerated those weekly movements continued to be, both up and down areas during bear markets, right?
  8. 37:05And one particular quote I'll never forget from Alan, he always says, was just in price there's knowledge, right?
  9. 41:32And August, of course, was, you know, different, but at the same time, opened up so high, right?
  10. 43:23If you had the stones to do it, right?
  11. 45:38So I was talking to some clients today that if after Wednesday's huge spike, what was best case scenario?
  12. 49:24And then also, you know, when something gets pretty oversold into support in a long-term uptrend, right?
Jeffrey Hirsch 0:15 ↗
Good Friday afternoon. I'm Jeff Hirsch, editor-in-chief of the Stock Trader's Almanac, and this is Wealth Wise on Biz Talk Today TV. I've got a very special treat today. I've got a real legit technician who's also a CFA to help us ascertain where this wild market is headed. Frank Cappelleri will join us in just a few minutes, but everyone is looking for bottom. In my experience, when people stop asking is this the bottom, it's more likely the bottom. So, let's look at a few things that are on my radar. I'm going to share my screen, and we're going to look at the history of these big two-day 10% declines.
I've been advising to wait for a fatter pitch. You can see we did have a big day. Let me see if I can get my... there we go. There's my little pointer up here. We did have a nice week following the 10% decline. Good news is that, you know, after 6 months or so, this tariff tantrum should be behind us. But, this is not the kind of company we'd like to be keeping. All previous instances of this two-day 10% drop were bear markets, recessions, and or war. We've sort of... this 33, there was a day that was backed out. There was 3 days in a row that the first 2 days were down 10%, and the second and third days were down 10%. So, we just had the last one here.
But the other thing that we're looking at, we pulled out an old study that Yale Hirsch, my illustrious late father who started the Almanac, came up with back in '75, where he made a call based upon this waterfall declines that the Dow would hit 800, believe it or not, back in '85 after the '74 low. But, what we're seeing here is that most bear market bottoms since 1950 were preceded by these waterfall declines about 12 to 28%. There's a little leeway here, and this usually over 2 to 4 months in duration. We see this fear and desperation and helplessness that characterizes the sentiment at bear market bottoms, a lot like we had on Thursday before the big turnaround and the pause.
But, what's remarkable here is that on average we get from the low, from the bear market low that was, you know, ended with this waterfall decline, it takes about 5 months on average to get back to where we fell off the cliff. There's a couple other dates in here and, you know, this was put out in the newsletter. You can go back and study this, but basically, aside from some extenuating circumstances, for the most part, once you hit that bottom — not that we've hit it yet — it takes about 5 months or so, or, you know, 3 to 8 months to get back to where you fell off it. So, we've got that going for us.
The other thing that I'm still concerned with is the post-election year trend. I know Frank has tracked this a bit. I've seen him pick it up in his work. This is... I brought back the full chart. This is the one that initially had in the Stock Trader's Almanac outlook for 2025, adding in the brown line here, beige, whatever it is, for '25. You can see that we're below much of all the different seasonal patterns here from 1949 to '24, the incumbent party wins line, the all election years line in black, my aggregate cycle which combines seasonals, the four-year cycle, and the fifth year decades of the centennial cycle. This fifth year presidency, the second term.
And then the red line here, which is when an incumbent party loses the previous year, which we had happen. So, well below all of that. Then, you know, we've got these bearish post-election year trends. On page 28 of the Almanac, we look at the difference in post-election year behavior, year performance, under Republican administrations versus Democratic administrations. Midterms tend to be rough for the Democrats. Post-election year is rougher for the Republicans. They tend to come in and take care of their least savory policy initiatives first. We're seeing that very acutely this year.
So I've got... and then, you know, as noted in the Almanac, post-election years have been better since '85. So we've got this Republican administration line. There was a bunch of rough years, '69, '73, '57. This is the Republican administrations from '53 to '81. We've got all Republican administrations about flat for the year since 1950. And then, the incumbent party lost line still kind of a paltry 5% gain. But, this year we've blasted through all that. You know, as I've said several times, if we can get April, the market, we can get April in the green, which would be quite an undertaking, that would be pretty positive.
And you know, I think it's going to be hard to do, but that's what we're looking at from the post-election year trend standpoint, still kind of bearish. I brought up my technical support chart cuz I got Frank on, and this is some of the things we're looking at. I, you know, today's not on this chart because I like the drawings I have here. What do we close at, about 5350 or something like that? We can figure that out in a moment, but it's still below this area. Yes, we had a huge snapback rally up into this sort of yellow zone, which... here's this potential W 123 swing bottom I had highlighted before. We blew through that. That becomes some firm resistance in my view.
It's the old election gap that used to be, that was the resistance in the middle of the W. That got taken out. I had drawn this trend line from the April lows through the August lows. We came right through that. The old April highs, early April highs from '24, we cut through that. April lows, we cut through that. So to me there's not a whole lot of room down below this support. If we can hold this 5,000 area, 4950, whatever it is, that would be encouraging. I put this other, this 4800 is, I know it's a level that Frank tracks back to. We'll talk about that in a minute. Back to, I think it was the '22 lows if memory serves. We'll look at his weekly chart shortly.
And then we've got the midsummer '23 highs and the January lows, this 4600, 4700 area. Below that, the '23 lows come into play, 4,000, 4100. And then the pre-COVID highs, which is way over here, not on this chart, and the '22 lows, which are 3400 to 3500. So where we find support is anyone's guess. If we can find it here, that would be very encouraging. So, I'm going to close my deck for a minute here and then bring Frank on, and we'll have a little discussion.
I mean, basically, as Frank comes in, we're still in a trade war with China. The 90-day pause doesn't change that. I think less equity exposure is in order until we get more clarity on the tariffs, the trade war, and economics. My worst-case scenario is still in play for a flat to negative year, about 50/50. There's an increased likelihood of a recession, but this too shall pass, as my mother used to say. But, it's likely not over yet. The time to buy will present itself over the next several weeks or months. For now, I think it's best to sit tight and keep your powder dry. The bear has reared its ugly head and recession is quite possible. So, Frank, welcome.
Glad you could make it. Frank's the founder president of Cap Thesis. His firm helps active investors profit through technical analysis. I know he uses financial, you know, other analysis as well, fundamental analysis. He's been on the street for 25 years. He was at Instinet, Nomura, Smith Barney. He's a trader, technical analyst, research specialist, a strategist. And most impressively, he has both the CFA and CMT designations, and he's a CNBC Pro contributor. So, Frank, welcome. Thanks for coming, man.
Frank Cappelleri 8:53 ↗
It's a lot, Jeff. I've been a fan of your work for many, many years now. So, it's always a pleasure to be here.
Jeffrey Hirsch 8:57 ↗
It's good. We've been missing each other at a few events and a few things, but we've been tracking each other on LinkedIn and other posts. So, you were on Wall Street for 25 years. I mean, you look like you're probably maybe 25. What was the epiphany to go out on your own?
Frank Cappelleri 9:17 ↗
Well, good question. Just to give you a brief, I guess, history. So, I started my career working at Smith Barney with two technical analysis pioneers, Alan Shaw and Louise Yamada. And I didn't know anything about technical analysis...
Jeffrey Hirsch 9:31 ↗
Shaw and Louise Yamada. Let's make sure everyone knows those names.
Frank Cappelleri 9:35 ↗
Yeah. Looking back, wonderful experience. I still speak with, you know, Louise. She still has her hand on the market and she's a wonderful woman as well. So, that was 1997. That was the middle of the internet, you know, bubble and then burst. And, you know, I just learned a lot of the basis of technical analysis in particular, you know, how to talk to both institutional clients and some retail clients I talked with as well, because that was a very big part of Smith Barney back then, which has since been sold to Morgan Stanley.
From that point, I went to Instinet where I was there for 22 years, initially as a junior analyst. So, saw the bubble burst there and then spent 16 years as an institutional equity sales trader. So, I was there during the thick of that. Obviously, the great financial crisis. And so, that was much different, you know, responsibilities I had back then. It was, you know, obviously you're responding to all the requests of buy-side traders, and I started talking more to analysts and PMs and started doing more content.
And so, toward the end of that, you know, I had to make a decision. Like, I was getting requests and content, I was doing more of it. But, again, if you're a sales trader, you have to be on it, and I felt like I wasn't giving... I could give as much attention to that side, and I could add much more to the firm and the clients by doing some more content. Well, so, the last few years there, I moved off of the desk and into more research role and then as a desk strategist at the end.
And so, because of that, you know, I got more conversations and it gave me, you know, thought that, you know, I could... I want eventually to make, you know, do something on my own with this. So, I talked to a number of people who thought I was good. I was getting a lot more requests from outside of Wall Street, some financial advisors. So, I saw some of the content other places. And that's what really, you know, encouraged me to start Capital Thesis.
And so, a lot of the same type of content I provide now, and, you know, I was talking to as many of those of the buy-side counterparts to get an idea, right, of what some of the biggest and most successful financial institutions found useful, and I felt that it could also be helpful to financial advisors, active investors as well. And so, at Capital Thesis, I provide a lot of different forms of research, but it's really looking at things from a big picture point of view, getting a market stance, identifying the major trend, and making then trade recommendations based on that trend. So, we go from, again, very big picture, looking at all the asset classes, all the way down to making specific stock trade ideas with, you know, exit points on both the upside and downside.
Jeffrey Hirsch 12:08 ↗
So, was this research kind of came out of your trading, what you were researching for your own trading, and then people started seeing it and wanting more of your research and less of you trading? Is that how it evolved? Is that what I'm hearing?
Frank Cappelleri 12:21 ↗
Uh, yes and no. You probably understand, Jeff, at a financial institution, they frown upon personal trading, pretty much. But, at the same time...
Jeffrey Hirsch 12:29 ↗
I mean, you weren't working on a trading desk. I don't mean personal, but...
Frank Cappelleri 12:32 ↗
Yeah. No, yeah, exactly.
Jeffrey Hirsch 12:33 ↗
The research that went behind the trades that the firms, they were making for the firm.
Frank Cappelleri 12:38 ↗
Yep. Well, a lot of it was just advising. So, for instance, if you're a buy-side trader, and you have, you know, millions of shares of stock to use, so you know that's coming from a portfolio manager with a big picture view. So, understanding that, and then trying to pick the right spots on a short-term basis to help, you know, generate alpha.
So, I think having those different roles there, I kind of understood the life cycle of a trade, if you will, right? And people looking at it different ways. You had the buy-side analyst, of course, trying to identify the right stocks, and then portfolio manager using that as part of his bigger puzzle, then obviously the trader has him as a very big responsibility to make sure that he gets some good prices. And as we're on the sell-side, you have to help with that process. And toward the end there, I was able to talk to each one of those kind of person on the other side to understand how each of them were thinking.
Jeffrey Hirsch 13:30 ↗
So, what areas do you cover mostly? Everything, currencies, bonds, stocks, or mostly equities, or all of it, commodities?
Frank Cappelleri 13:37 ↗
Yeah, I look at all of it for inputs, but most of it are equities. And it's, you know, I think that's... we're in a very interesting part of the business where you really have an ETF or anything. You can, you know, express your interest in a way you don't need to...
Jeffrey Hirsch 13:50 ↗
There's more ETFs than stocks now, right?
Frank Cappelleri 13:53 ↗
Yeah, probably right. And so you don't need to have a currency background to understand how you can, you know, express your interest, you know, with that. So, I spend a lot of time talking about ETFs.
Jeffrey Hirsch 14:04 ↗
So, it's a newsletter service, and you provide your research to clients. Do you have a lot of individual investors or mostly institutional?
Frank Cappelleri 14:12 ↗
There's both. There's both. Yeah, there's... you know, I have thought, still talk to institutions as well, and a lot of that is, you know, the product is more access to them. So, I talk a lot about strategy on that side. Otherwise, people that find interest in this can go to the website and subscribe to different packages that we have there.
Jeffrey Hirsch 14:31 ↗
The website is?
Frank Cappelleri 14:33 ↗
capthes.com
Jeffrey Hirsch 14:35 ↗
Hard, that's a hard one. Cap with the two P's, right?
Frank Cappelleri 14:37 ↗
Yeah.
Jeffrey Hirsch 14:38 ↗
Nicely done. So, why both CFA and CMT?
Frank Cappelleri 14:45 ↗
Well, again, I was very young and didn't know which one to choose. But, I was sitting in the midst of a big fundamental research department. And so, even though I was with technical analysis, I'll tell you the story. You know, when I came out of college, it was a good job market back then, and I got two different offers from Smith Barney's research. One was to be an assistant with an automobile analyst. And I was like, you know, what 22-year-old doesn't really fancy about driving around cool cars and going to all the auto shows, but in reality, I knew we'd never get close to that. I'd just be in a spreadsheet typing away.
And then it was with technical analysis. And I was like, you know, number one, they had this huge chart room. People got a lot more space than anyone else here. And it was like, you know, I don't know much about the market, but what I learned about it, and that I can pick the sector that appeals to me, and, you know, and CFA would help with that. So, I started that process. Actually, I started taking both exams at once. So, if anyone who's thinking about doing it, don't do that. Because if you, you know, focus on one at a time.
Jeffrey Hirsch 15:46 ↗
Wait, so which one's harder?
Frank Cappelleri 15:49 ↗
Well, CFA is much more vigorous and rigorous, you know, it's... I shouldn't say that. And I also liked technical analysis much more. So, I enjoyed that process. So, I think going through all of that, it just really pushed me in that direction because it just felt right. I had more of an interest in, you know, the trading aspect of stock as opposed to going deep into, you know, the fundamentals of companies.
Jeffrey Hirsch 16:14 ↗
You lean a little bit more technical, I think, right?
Frank Cappelleri 16:16 ↗
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 100%.
Jeffrey Hirsch 16:18 ↗
So, you got them both in '97?
Frank Cappelleri 16:22 ↗
No, I graduated from college in '97. I didn't get them both in '97. Yeah, it took a while because I was a lot of... you know, I was changing jobs, got married. So, things kind of got paused for a while, but after, you know, 6 or 7 years, had them both, and that was a good day when all that was done, let me tell you.
Jeffrey Hirsch 16:41 ↗
I bet it was. So, let's cut to the chase. Are we in a bear market or not?
Frank Cappelleri 16:48 ↗
Yes. And I would... I say that.
Jeffrey Hirsch 16:51 ↗
I love it.
Frank Cappelleri 16:51 ↗
Yeah, well, I'll say that this, that, you know, we can look at this as 20% down defines a bear market. I like to think of it as we're seeing bear market price action regardless of where we are in terms of measure from a top or so. It could be down 5%.
And the way I look at it is things really started to change, you know, as January developed into February, where some of the things that I track on a daily basis that kept us in the uptrend over and over again started to flip, started to see some cracks. And then of course when things... I would just say things could have rolled over, but when, you know, February ended and March began, it just, you tell that things were a little bit different. And then of course it's been accelerated a lot now. And even with these big moves, you know, one of the characteristics of a bear market is just exaggerated daily moves. Like that, you just, you don't see that in a bull market, and you don't see the types of things that help a bull market, meaning that bullish patterns form and you get clean breakouts. Right? So...
Jeffrey Hirsch 17:51 ↗
What are the things that you're tracking that are telling you this?
Frank Cappelleri 17:55 ↗
Yeah, so if you... So again, one of the things is just I track the number very simply, the number of 1%... opposite, excuse me, 1% advances and declines S&P has on a rolling monthly basis, right? And so, to give you an example, from in 2022, almost every month had at least 10, sometimes up to 13 of them, so that just shows high two-way volatility. 2023 and '24 wasn't the case at all, hardly any of them even cracked 10, and that helped, you know, again define how the market was pretty tranquil advance.
Jeffrey Hirsch 18:29 ↗
Less 1% daily moves in an up market.
Frank Cappelleri 18:34 ↗
And more in the down market.
Jeffrey Hirsch 18:35 ↗
1% moves up and down, yeah.
Frank Cappelleri 18:37 ↗
Up and down, right.
Jeffrey Hirsch 18:38 ↗
Right.
Frank Cappelleri 18:39 ↗
And so also, you know, within that realm, we still want to see more 1% moves than 1% declines. Very simple. But back in 2022, there were 130 plus or minus 1% moves for the year, just about 65 down, 63 up. So as we know, the biggest moves happen in response... the biggest advances happen in response to biggest declines, we also have a high frequency of them. And then in 2023 and '24, not nearly as many. But that just meant that the market was more consistent.
So now we come to now, in March we had 13 of them, right? So, the first time that happened since September 2022. And now, you know, we've had nine trading days, and seven of them have been at least 1%. Obviously, much more than that. So, you know, we could be off the low. Who knows? But, when I'm looking back at this, I'm trying to compare it to 2022-23. And what that change for my work really wasn't until the second quarter of 2023. That's when those number of 1% moves fell off a cliff. And that coincided with bullish patterns starting to work and breakouts. So, you know, I'm never going to call the bottom, but at the same time, that way of looking at the market allows us to identify regime changes and ride most of it.
Jeffrey Hirsch 19:54 ↗
So, it took about a... would you say the second quarter of '23 to...
Frank Cappelleri 19:57 ↗
Yeah.
Jeffrey Hirsch 19:58 ↗
Okay.
Did you have any of the four-year cycle overlay on that? I mean, October, midterm election year October was a... and sentiment being down was a big, a big, you know, warning sign, a big green light to me. I mean, I got pretty bullish back in '22. I got lucky because everything lined up. Seasonals, four-year cycle. Is that... that's something you have an overlay on, right?
Frank Cappelleri 20:22 ↗
I do. And I use your... I use your stuff a lot, and a lot more recently, I should say, as well. And I find that that gives me confidence in situations like this, where if I'm still waiting for some signals to go, and knowing that we're getting close to an end of something that you pointed out. I say it all the time.
Jeffrey Hirsch 20:37 ↗
We all should have paid more attention to the long history of post-election years coming in this year.
Frank Cappelleri 20:43 ↗
Yeah.
Jeffrey Hirsch 20:43 ↗
President myself included. I was a little bit, you know, swayed by the recent since '85 pattern of post-election years, but we are getting an old-school post-election year come up this right now. We'll see if this bottomed out, as you said. Nobody knows where that bottom is without a little hindsight, but it was there for us.
What else are you looking at in these uptrends that, you know, and when did you start to see the bear emerge? Like was it a couple of days ago, this week? When were you convinced that we're in a bear or that we had the bearish traits?
Frank Cappelleri 21:19 ↗
Well, I'll give you just a quick breakdown from what I saw from December until now.
Jeffrey Hirsch 21:22 ↗
Right.
Frank Cappelleri 21:23 ↗
Quickly. But so from October 2023 to December 2024, from my count, the S&P 500 had 11 bullish patterns form, 11 successful breakouts, meaning that broke through resistance, did not revisit, or had a clean breakout, and eventually hit a target. That doesn't happen...
Jeffrey Hirsch 21:41 ↗
All technical patterns.
Frank Cappelleri 21:43 ↗
All technical patterns. So 11 straight.
Jeffrey Hirsch 21:46 ↗
Rattle off some of these pattern names.
Frank Cappelleri 21:49 ↗
Cup and handles, inverse head and shoulders pattern, just regular trading ranges.
Jeffrey Hirsch 21:54 ↗
So basically, when you... it was a consistent digestive phase that would resolve to the upside over and over again.
Frank Cappelleri 21:59 ↗
Right. And then along the way, I only saw one time where the bearish pattern hit a target, and that was during the crazy August of 2024, and it happened within 3 days.
Jeffrey Hirsch 22:09 ↗
Right there at the beginning stages, and then everything was reversed. So in December...
Frank Cappelleri 22:12 ↗
Weak seasonal period.
Jeffrey Hirsch 22:14 ↗
There you go.
Frank Cappelleri 22:15 ↗
It's all we need, really, right? Know that. So we got to December, and, you know, getting closer, we saw some weakness, you know, on the surface, but then there was the first time it was a small inverse head and shoulders pattern fail. So in November, you'd be like, well, it's small, but sometimes that happens. You just need a lot of volatility sometimes to create these biggest patterns, right? And then that corrected itself, and you get to end of February, right? You break out through 6150, had 3 days of a follow-through, reversed lower.
Again, and then a few other small ones, and then at that point, you started to see bearish patterns develop, but then it was like, you know what? This looks... this feels a lot different, didn't have this before, and started to get more, you know, more percent advances and declines as well. So, I would say by the time the beginning of March happened, it was risky, and then of course everything started to fall apart.
Jeffrey Hirsch 23:11 ↗
So, what are these bearish patterns that have presented themselves that you've seen since December?
Frank Cappelleri 23:16 ↗
The failed head and shoulders in December.
Jeffrey Hirsch 23:18 ↗
That was the one... Yeah, there were a few patterns in February, right?
Frank Cappelleri 23:21 ↗
Mhm.
And then, if you recall, in the middle of March, we had that little rally, some stabilization around March 13th, 20th, around there. Those were all different patterns that they formed, small ones, bullish patterns. They failed, but at the same time, we saw the first bearish flag occur. And that was at the time... that was a downside target of 5,025.
Jeffrey Hirsch 23:46 ↗
Let me pull up my S&P chart, cuz I think it's important to talk about that. I'm just going to throw an audible in here. So, this is the failed... what... this is the head and shoulders right here in December?
Frank Cappelleri 24:05 ↗
Well, that was... that was a... yeah, that was a failed bearish pattern. It didn't... one didn't really work out. But I was looking more... the one that really struck me was after the... you know, we had the breakout fail all the way in the middle of February there, the February 19th high.
Jeffrey Hirsch 24:18 ↗
Right.
Frank Cappelleri 24:19 ↗
Right there. So, that was a big cup and handle pattern from my perspective, connecting the highs from December to that.
Jeffrey Hirsch 24:26 ↗
Right. Yep.
Frank Cappelleri 24:27 ↗
So, that failed. And then the way down inside there, there is... you can't really see it as much there, but I sometimes look at shorter-term charts to identify patterns when it's like that.
Jeffrey Hirsch 24:38 ↗
Sure.
Frank Cappelleri 24:38 ↗
So, that consolidation failed. And then you go down to the middle of March. After the initial fall, then that rallied back up there. We have the two there.
Jeffrey Hirsch 24:47 ↗
That... that failure right there.
Frank Cappelleri 24:49 ↗
That was a failure, but that also ended up being a bear flag pattern. Right?
Jeffrey Hirsch 24:54 ↗
Yes.
Frank Cappelleri 24:55 ↗
And then that target was down at 5,025. I remember putting it out there before anything really bad happened.
Jeffrey Hirsch 25:01 ↗
Yeah.
Frank Cappelleri 25:02 ↗
And got some pushback. That's pretty substantial. I'm like... I agree, but this is all data-driven. We respected the breakouts on the way up. We have to respect the breakdowns on the way down. As long as the breakdowns hold, we have to think that that's a possibility. Which of course that was hit as things fell apart this past Monday.
Jeffrey Hirsch 25:20 ↗
All right, I'm going to take this off. I'm going to confuse everybody. So, let's just... let's pull up some of your charts and talk about some of the things that you're seeing there.
So, the first... these are some bearish market characteristics charts. I'm going to share this again here. This is... appreciate you sending these in here. So, this is new 52-week lows picking up. I mean, this is... this is kind of technical, but I mean, these are market internals, technical analysis, or is that... is that part of... is it... that's considered technical, too?
Frank Cappelleri 25:58 ↗
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Without a doubt.
Jeffrey Hirsch 26:00 ↗
We track weekly new highs and new lows a lot in the newsletter. I think you've seen that. So, what are we looking at here?
Frank Cappelleri 26:06 ↗
These are just number of new 52-week lows. This is a daily chart going back to 2005. So, 20 years worth. And so, what struck me was that as just a few days ago, I think it was Thursday and Friday or Friday and Monday, I forget which ones, but we had two straight days when there was over 130 stocks making new 52-week lows. And that came like... I don't want to say out of nowhere, but we had like numbers percolating in the 30s and 40s before that, but that just took out everything almost.
And so, I think from this, when that happens, it's very good. You see that, this go back in history and see some perspective there. And of course, you know, they're the most volatile times, the bear markets.
Jeffrey Hirsch 26:47 ↗
These are bear markets highlighted, right?
Frank Cappelleri 26:49 ↗
Yeah, well, the biggest ones are. So, what I wanted to show there was in 2022, when of course the great financial crisis, two things. Number one, that number got a lot higher. So, you see that rate of the almost at the low there.
Jeffrey Hirsch 27:01 ↗
And more frequent as well is what I'm seeing. There's a lot more of these.
Frank Cappelleri 27:05 ↗
That's exactly the point, Jeff. Yes.
Jeffrey Hirsch 27:07 ↗
Yeah. So, this is kind of like the big miss that one.
Frank Cappelleri 27:09 ↗
What's that?
Jeffrey Hirsch 27:10 ↗
I said I knew you wouldn't miss that one.
And this is New York Stock Exchange or all new lows?
Frank Cappelleri 27:19 ↗
Just S&P 500 only.
Jeffrey Hirsch 27:20 ↗
Just S&P 500 only.
Frank Cappelleri 27:22 ↗
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeffrey Hirsch 27:23 ↗
So, the point being is that, you know, we may get more, you know, if the market goes down again. So, I think the point being is that, like you said, we get clusters of these in the longest bear markets. And, you know, in the toughest markets like this. And so, here's a first instance where we could look at it in a positive. You know, if for instance, say the Magnificent 7 stocks and they'll likely continue to struggle, but the rest of the market, the field, they call it, does a lot better, then you may see that the S&P kind of hovering near its lows with this number of new 52-week lows not getting any worse or actually start to get a lot better, right? So, that's a divergence we could possibly look for.
But if the S&P starts making new lows, then this continues to spike, then of course we have to think that, you know, we have to go through this for longer than we've had so far.
Still early, too early to tell, basically.
Frank Cappelleri 28:11 ↗
No doubt. Even though, you know, even the ones highlighted in yellow, you know, they look relatively quick, but, you know, they were painful. 2011, that was, you know, number of months. Obviously, '15 and '16 was a tough time as well.
Jeffrey Hirsch 28:23 ↗
Oh, I jumped in the next one. I'm sorry.
Frank Cappelleri 28:25 ↗
Yeah.
Jeffrey Hirsch 28:26 ↗
No, no. So, this is weekly moving averages. So, we're looking at going back to '22. Tell me what we're seeing here.
Frank Cappelleri 28:35 ↗
So, I think the good part about having 2022 happen is that we can reference it, and it's not too much of an outlandish time that we can think that it could happen again. So, for instance, back here, we're using a 13-week, 26-week, and 40-week, which just represents one quarter of action, two quarters of action, and then 40-week is three quarters, but also very close to the 200-day moving average. And so, in 2021, as we can tell, the very end of the beginning of that chart, when the market peaked and started to roll over, all those moving averages started to roll over as well. So, that did two things. It just showed that longer-term momentum was flipping from positive to negative,
And then those lines where the S&P was trading above and was sloping higher, now we're sloping lower, and now they turn from support to resistance. All the way like a clear death cross to me, because when the 50-day crosses below the 200-day, everyone talks about this death cross. It's been close to lows in a lot of situations. So this is when we're seeing the 13-week come below the 26-week and the 40-week.
Jeffrey Hirsch 29:42 ↗
And on a daily, what does that equate to on a daily moving average, since you probably know it off the top of your head?
Frank Cappelleri 29:47 ↗
Well, the 40-week is like the 200-day.
Jeffrey Hirsch 29:49 ↗
And this 26 is like a 50?
Frank Cappelleri 29:52 ↗
Or a little bit more. It's a little bit more.
Jeffrey Hirsch 29:54 ↗
Yeah, yeah, a little bit more.
Frank Cappelleri 29:55 ↗
Yeah, so regardless, I think it just shows that you're just showing different versions of moving averages, faster crossing over slower, which is the death cross, whatever you want to call it. And then, so the concern was if and when that started to happen again in 2024 or '25, then we're going to be faced with something similar. Now, of course, what's happened in the past two weeks, the S&P's below all of them by a good amount, which is evident, but I think what's going to be more important is to see after this rally attempt, and maybe what happens in the next two weeks, you know, how the S&P then reacts to this as well. Are they going to be resistance? Are these moving averages going to continue to roll over? So I think I'd be very surprised if we're right back to new highs after what we've gone through, right?
Jeffrey Hirsch 30:40 ↗
That's the bottom line. Me as well. And at the bottom window here, and this is from StockCharts, which I use as well. You clearly use it better than I do, but down at the bottom pane, you've got the relative strength index. Can you explain how that's calculated and what it's showing us here? I think this is important that you've got this.
Frank Cappelleri 30:58 ↗
Sure. The RSI is just, you know, I'm using this as a 14-week and just tracking momentum. But that, and it's what I think is interesting about this is that you can see sometimes that divergences, right, can last for a long time. So for instance, as we were starting to show this in the summertime, when the RSI was at like 80 down to 77, 69, it wasn't over, it was still overbought, but getting weaker as it goes along. So this is always, I always use the RSI as somewhat of a warning sign. Sometimes it gives a lot more information, but so the point was I wasn't going to tell clients to get out of the market just because the RSI was moving lower, but also showing that the first sign of the market starting to roll over back in 2021, '22 was, I don't have the line there, but it was also very similar where that started to see momentum on a weekly basis even started to fade. And so if and when you get the S&P below those moving averages and they start to roll over and you have an RSI that's moving lower, then those are three definite signs that momentum has shifted.
Jeffrey Hirsch 32:02 ↗
Is it trend that's important here with the RSI and the level, or just level? I mean, I see when it gets below 50 is where it tends to break down. Does it matter so much, or is it more trend?
Frank Cappelleri 32:14 ↗
I use both ways. So for instance, the strongest uptrends, especially on a weekly basis, the RSI will oscillate between the upper half of that scale and overbought, where the reverse, as you can see in 2022, didn't really get above 50 right until again, the beginning stages of '23.
Jeffrey Hirsch 32:33 ↗
So these weekly averages, something we got to, we should have, this will be another data point today. We'll add it on to this, and then next week will be important, I think.
Frank Cappelleri 32:45 ↗
Yes, for sure.
Jeffrey Hirsch 32:46 ↗
All right, let's pull up this weekly chart here. Weekly decline of at least 9%. Explain what you put up here for us.
Frank Cappelleri 32:56 ↗
Right, so it's funny, I thought this was like a really important one last week, and then we have a 9% up day this week, right?
Jeffrey Hirsch 33:03 ↗
Wild.
Frank Cappelleri 33:04 ↗
Um.
Jeffrey Hirsch 33:05 ↗
What that'll teach you.
Frank Cappelleri 33:06 ↗
Yeah, right. But it also is, I thought this was interesting because 9% down weeks just haven't happened that much. This is going back 50 years, right? You see how many times that occurred. '87 crash, twice in the internet bubble bursting, only once or maybe once or twice in the great financial crisis, COVID, and now. And so again, it just shows us that this is bear market activity. Whether it lasts or not, I think it just shows that investors have to be careful. You just saw what happened on...
Jeffrey Hirsch 33:37 ↗
COVID looks like it's close to the bottom.
Frank Cappelleri 33:39 ↗
Yeah.
Jeffrey Hirsch 33:40 ↗
Financial crisis, not quite.
Frank Cappelleri 33:42 ↗
Not quite.
Jeffrey Hirsch 33:44 ↗
Um, dot-com, you know, decline, not near it at all, and then '87 crash was pretty much right on it again.
Frank Cappelleri 33:53 ↗
It was on it, but I'm sure you remember...

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APA

Hirsch, J. (2025, April 22). Decoding the Bear Market: Frank Cappelleri's Technical Insights with Jeffrey Hirsch [Interview transcript]. CrossCheck Media. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3115340/

MLA

Jeffrey Hirsch. "Decoding the Bear Market: Frank Cappelleri's Technical Insights with Jeffrey Hirsch." CrossCheck Media, 22 Apr. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3115340/.

BibTeX
@misc{hirsch2025_3115340,
  author       = {Jeffrey Hirsch},
  title        = {Decoding the Bear Market: Frank Cappelleri's Technical Insights with Jeffrey Hirsch},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, CrossCheck Media. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2025},
  month        = {apr},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3115340/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}