Talk:Hindenburg Omen

Untitled
In the conclusion section, the last sentence reads: "On the other hand there has never been a significant stock market decline in history, that was not preceded by a confirmed Hindenburg Omen."

"stock market decline in history" might be a little broad a claim, since referenced material only traces the indicator back to 1985. The indicator itself is based on the NYSE which hasn't existed as long as the stock markets in general, nor is the indicator valid on other markets as stated. 24.17.81.163 16:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting rid of the claim and replacing with something backed up by the sourceTicklemygrits 07:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

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I think we need to dig into this suspicion of "overfitting." HOs have strong predictive significance in terms of statistical correlation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlation), and the method used to derive HOs seems entirely consistent with the standard scientific method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method):

1. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step 2. 2. Form a conjecture: When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook. 3. Deduce a prediction from that explanation: If you assume 2 is true, what consequences follow? 4. Test : Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove 2. It is a logical error to seek 3 directly as proof of 2. This error is called affirming the consequent.

I am not saying remove the comment on overfitting but it needs more explication; either substantiatation or refutation. As it stands, it merely serves as a drive-by potshot.

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The page claims that no Hindenburg Omen has been triggered in 2010. However, http://markostake.blogspot.com/2010/07/hindenburg-omen-foretells-coming-market.html claims there was a Hindenburg Omen on Jul 6th, 2010. Can somebody more proficient than me check this? 137.248.1.25 (talk) 16:06, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Followed by a confirming instance on August 11th, just within the 36 day period. That doesn't look good. -- Derek Ross | Talk'' 22:49, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Can anybody tell me why my change concerning the number of new highs and lows, which must be at least 79 and not 69, is always changed back to 69, which is the wrong number??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.155.127.83 (talk) 16:30, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The source is here: http://www.safehaven.com/article/3882/the-hindenburg-omen-a-potential-stock-market-crash-signal This is the only reliable source for the Hindenburg Omen. I don't care what some kind of fools on CNN tell people. In this article, the first condition is that the number of new lows and highs, the smaller one must be > 79. So please don't delete the truth, folks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.155.127.83 (talk) 16:40, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * That link help clarify where the 79 figure came from. It is just used as an example of a number that would be over the 2.2% threshold. It was NOT saying or implying that such would be the minimum required. The minimum is a fixed ration = (NYSE New Issues) x 0.022, and then round a fractional number up to the next whole number. Carltonh (talk) 14:40, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

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 * Bwrs (talk) 15:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)


 * A copyright violation of what? DeeDeeKerby (talk) 18:13, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Compared to what?
What are the odds of a similar negative move within 40 days in the absence of an HO? --Dmh (talk) 22:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * That questions is completely irrelevant. There is no claim that HO's precede ****ALL**** declines in a certain category.  Rather, the claim is that IF a HO does happen, THEN (so the claim goes) a decline will follow.


 * (It could well be that HOs signal only one in 10 or one in 100 such declines; there is no claim at all that HOs precede *ALL* such declines. The claim is that IF there is a HO, THEN there will be a decline.)


 * It's a bit like in high school logic class, that stuff about the difference between If, and, If And Only if !  :)


 * If you wanted to "compare" the HO to other (supposed) trading signals that humans have developed, you would have to look at the success rate of the HO compared to the success rate of other such signals that supposedly predict whatever type of market moves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.148.178.35 (talk) 16:56, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd consider it relevant. I claim that within forty days of my typing this post, there will be no elephants under your bed.  If that actually pans out, would you consider my typing this post a good predictor of elephants not being under your bed?


 * Markets fluctuate. From the NYSE composite data I looked at, 5% drops don't look particularly uncommon.  Forty days is a reasonably wide window (and the article doesn't even claim that it's always enough).  In order to tell if anything statistically significant is going on, you need to compare against some baseline.  Thus: What is the probability that a 5% drop will occur within forty days of a randomly chosen date?   If there's not a statistically significant difference, then there's no way to trade on an HO.  It's not telling you anything you don't already know.  --Dmh (talk) 03:45, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Suggested Improvements
> The 2.2% number seems to be tied to (or gives the appearance of being) the average growth within the US economy since 1955, an average of only about 2%. What is the source for this? Even if there was somebody who made such a guess, this has no place on the page.

Also, the discussion of central banks being able to rig the market in order to prevent the omen from appearing is a little far fetched, I propose to remove this as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kotika98 (talk • contribs) 03:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistencies
In the Mechanics section it is stated:

"1.) A substantial number of stocks set new annual highs 2.) A substantial number of stocks set new annual lows  3.) Conditions 1 & 2 cannot both take place at the same time, it is either one or the other—but not both"

Emphasis is that both conditions can NOT occur. However in the next section(Criteria) it is stated: "The daily number of NYSE new 52 Week Highs and the daily number of new 52 Week Lows must both be greater than 79..." Now the emphasis is on "both". So, which is it? Both or not both?

Second, the above line from the criteria section indicates that the "magic number" is 79, however the first example(Aug 12) from the "Recent Occurrences" section reads: "...failing only in that 67 stocks hit new lows, rather than the required 69"

So, is it 79 or 69 as the target number? Gcronau (talk) 17:19, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It is definitely 79. Look here, this is one of the basic articles concerning the HO: http://www.safehaven.com/article/3882/the-hindenburg-omen-a-potential-stock-market-crash-signal —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.155.127.50 (talk) 20:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * If you look at the article you linked, you'll see that the target number is defined as greater than 2.2% of the number of NYSE issues traded on the given day. If there were 3600 issues traded, the number will be 79, but if there are only 3100 issues traded, then the number will be 69. The article simply uses 79 as an example. Tghw (talk) 20:04, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * What you say is simply not true. The article says that if the number is > 79 you may start to consider if there are other conditions met for a HO to be true or not. If the 79-criteria is not met, there is no need checking any of the other conditions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.155.127.83 (talk) 21:03, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * A hard number of 79 (or any hard number) does not make sense, as the measure is of a certain portion of the market is experiencing high volatility. If you were to apply this to another exchange, the 2.2% number would still work, but 79 would not because fewer issues were traded. On some exchanges, 79 could represent 10% of the days issues. Also, see http://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/07/HindenburgOmen.asp for another reference to 2.2%. There is no mention of 79 being an indicator. Tghw (talk) 23:29, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

2.5 or 2.2 ?

According the AOL, the mathematician who identified the Omen says the media is wrong, because in the first criteria, it requires 2.5, not just 2.2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.166.115.186 (talk) 02:02, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

"So is it a 10 week MA or just that the current level needs to be above the level of 10 weeks ago?" Lamotta1974 (talk) 18:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

How long have actual predictions been available?
Reading the article I'm very confused about how long this model has actually been used to make public predictions, as opposed to retrospective confirmations achieved by tweaking the number of highs and lows. And did the predictions tell us about that lovely little surprise Bush managed for us toward the end of his term? Wnt (talk) 19:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

In a similar vein, the 12-week moving average is not a measure cited by Miekka, so why mention it? Data-fitting at its worst. Secondly, "lovely little surprise Bush managed for us"? Are you saying he hated the American people so much that he was willing to cause his party to suffer a horrific electoral loss, just to spite us? That is ridiculous. Thanks for at least keeping your BDS outside the article text. In answer to your questions, there were a series of Hindenburg Omens in June 2008 that predicted the crisis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.67.99.107 (talk) 22:56, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd still like to see some numbers on whether the HO even performs better than chance. Yesterday I ran across a WSJ journal article (behind the paywall, unfortunately) stating that only 25% of HOs have actually been followed by significant drops.  Again, if the chances of a significant drop (however we define that) happening after any random day (however wide we actually define the window) are also around 25%, then the HO isn't really telling us anything.  Even it there is a statistically significant difference, "past performance is no guarantee of future returns" --Dmh (talk) 17:19, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

When a signal like this appears many times in some weeks it means that a huge crack could be very close.It's like before the attack to Pearl Horbour,many signals but nobody trusted them a lot.151.60.116.231 (talk) 04:01, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * For a contrasting viewpoint, see here.
 * Perhaps the chain of inference runs thus:
 * Times are uncertain. The market could well crash at any moment, and so ...
 * Interest in indicators like the HO rises, and so ...
 * If there is a crash, it will most likely be preceded by an HO (since the HO triggers all the time whether a crash is imminent or not) and so ...
 * The HO will be remembered since people are fretting about such things; the crash will be remembered since it's a crash, and so ...
 * The HO's reputation will only be enhanced, since it "predicted" the crash.
 * On the other hand, if there is no crash, the HO will soon be forgotten until the next period of uncertainty. See also confirmation bias --Dmh (talk) 04:19, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No moved. I looked at the references in the article that were online and the external links. Everyone appears to use the current title. So if this is to be moved, someone needs to provide some actual data that shows all of these sources are not correct. Yes, we have a style guideline but we also respect reliable sources. I have no objection to someone requesting the move again with some supporting data. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Hindenburg Omen → Hindenburg omen –

Like laws, rules, theorems, models on WP. Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony  (talk)  00:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support – as always on such things, I checked sources to see if it's consistently capitalized in reliable secondary sources. It's not, but the number of sources is so small, the number using lower case so small, that one could wonder.  Maybe the capitalization is to make it look German?  Dicklyon (talk) 23:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a style matter, therefore determinable by Wikipedia's own style guidelines. No need for much chasing of sources; but if there are few, this only makes our guidelines more relevant in settling an unstable matter. N oetica Tea? 07:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support, in agreement with the proposer's reasoning. N oetica Tea? 07:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not This change would make nonsense of the article title; tbe present title is a proper noun (if a somewhat waggish one); the proposed one is a simple error. A "Hindenburg Omen" is not an omen; it should not be called one. JCScaliger (talk) 23:48, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * How is it not an omen? And why is it called that if it's not an omen?  And what's with those books that talk about looking for "a Hindenberg Omen" in a generic sense? Dicklyon (talk) 00:03, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * One can talk about "finding a Gavrilo Princip" or "finding a Lenin" when one wants an agent of a specific type; this does not make the names common nouns. As for why it was called Hindenburg Omen - other than marketing - ask those who named it. But I see that you are opposed to that ;->  JCScaliger (talk) 00:35, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * What kind of omen? A Hindenburg omen.  Tony   (talk)  03:46, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. I assume the subject is not an end-time event, and is therefore repeatable. You think you can cut it as a chief sales officer? Not if you can't, "find and fix Hindenburg Omens," according to this book. If you can have more than one such omen, then the term is obviously not a proper noun. Kauffner (talk) 02:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Post-RM discussion
Here is the nutshell opening sentence from WP:CAPS, which has full guideline status: "Convention: For page titles, always use lowercase after the first word, and do not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless the title is a proper noun." So the only issue that needs to be addressed in an RM is whether the subject is in fact a proper noun. Kauffner (talk) 10:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Which is doubtless why so few of these discussions have mentioned the issue. But this is a proper noun; it's the name of a particular thing. JCScaliger (talk) 19:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * We usually decide what's a proper noun by looking at sources. In this case, since I couldn't find again the one source that had it lower case, I thanked the closer for his service even though it went against me.  But if you look at the arguments, Tony did present evidence that the term is not always used for a particular thing, and that's part of how we determine proper nouns from sources, too. So don't be a sore winner.  Dicklyon (talk) 21:55, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

NEEDS CHART
One or more example charts are needed for fast grasp or full comprehension. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ocdcntx (talk • contribs) 17:03, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Historic Omen appearances
Recent appearances of the Hindenburg Omen in the Stock Market:


 * November 16, 2019 [NASDAQ https://www.marketwatch.com/story/an-ominous-sounding-hindenburg-omen-and-a-ohama-titanic-syndrome-are-forming-in-a-key-stock-market-index-2019-11-14 https://www.marketwatch.com link to story ]


 * January 27, 2020 [S&P500 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-wuhan-coronavirus-spreads-to-the-stock-market-and-triggers-the-deadly-hindenburg-omen-163418385.html https://finance.yahoo.com link to story  ]