#057 Milton Berg: How To Spot ‘Turning Points’ In The Markets

Milton Berg, CFA (@BergMilton), the CEO and Director of Research of MB Advisors, joined Julia La Roche on episode 57 for a deep dive into his technical analysis, which was taped on February 16.

YouTube video: https://youtu.be/x7ms5ildUCQ

Berg focuses on "Turning Point Analysis,” where he looks for turning point ends of trends. For example, he called the market bottom on June 16. On the day this episode was recorded (February 16, 2023), Berg explained why February 2 may have marked an important turning point in the markets, suggesting a probable end to that uptrend and a correction at least for the short term.

Berg also shared that his firm is 100% short, going from leveraged long, to just 100% long to flat, and now 100% short.

Milton has been in the financial services industry since 1978, with an extensive background in various roles on the buy side. Milton founded MB Advisors in 2012 to address a need for high-quality independent research with a macro, technical and historical focus.

Milton began his career as a Commodities Analyst and Trader at Swiss-based Erlanger and Company. In 1980, he was a Fund Manager at First Investors Corp. and managed a natural resource fund as well as an option writing fund. In 1984, he moved to Oppenheimer and managed three mutual funds, which were each ranked as the top performer over a five-year period by Lipper. Milton then became a Partner at Steinhardt, one of the earliest hedge funds on Wall Street. More recently, he has worked with well-known titans of the hedge fund world, including Michael Steinhardt, George Soros, and Stanley Druckenmiller (Duquesne).

Milton’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Barron’s, and Institutional Investor, in addition to other media outlets. His groundbreaking report “The Boundaries of Technical Analysis” was published in the summer of 2008 in the MTA’s Journal of Technical Analysis. His 2015 research report “Approach to the Markets” outlines his method for analyzing the stock market.

Milton has held a Chartered Financial Analyst designation since 1979. The Institute for Economic Research named Milton as the Mutual Fund Manager of the Year in 1987 given his performance during the crash. That same year, Milton was jointly named with Stanley Druckenmiller as Mutual Fund Manager of the Year by Sylvia Porter’s Personal Finance Magazine.

He has a forthcoming book “Milton Berg’s Guide to Technical Analysis and the Stock Market"

0:00 Intro

0:31 Background from fundamental analysis to technical analysis

2:00 Approach to technical analysis

2:44 False assumption that stocks do well over the long term

3:50 More you stray from capitalism the more likely stocks won’t perform as well

5:08 Capital gains tax is an error

6:50 Debt situation

8:50 Study of the Dow

10:00 What happened in the past will not necessarily happen in the future

10:15 Emergence of the Fed changed nature of the economy

10:54 Called market bottom on June 16

17:40 Yield curve

18:30 Coming out of the slowdown

18:50 Bullish for the year, projection of 4650 in the S&P

19:04 Turning point analysis

19:28 February 2 was a turning point

24:50 Something happened on Feb. 2 that might signal the end of the rally

36:00 Reason we had a great bull market

36:40 Bonds

39:00 Missing bull market signals

47:46 Why had stocks ignored Fed’s tightening moves?

48:00 Maybe the real decline begins now

49:39 Gold

52:40 Bitcoin is a fiction