You can see in the chart below, the world stock index, ACWI, failed to breakout to new highs 2 weeks ago and continued pulling back last week. It should not come as a surprise the failure occurred where it failed twice before, in that $74-$75 zone. Patterns do repeat price and why as investors, we should anticipate this will occur, before it does. For now, price continues to consolidate between the $74-$75 high and December’s $61 low.

If patterns repeat, what should we anticipate the future holds? Looking left (to plan right) we see price of this index has gone through two other extended consolidations (’11-’12 & ’15-’16), both taking more than 80 weeks to resolve to a continuation to the upside. If this repeats again, we can expect the same outcome with price, in the short term, continuing its consolidation before finally breaking out to new highs, later in the year.  Why later this year? Patterns tend to be time symmetrical so while the current consolidation may not exactly match the prior periods, I expect it needs to further consolidate before we see it eventually break out. Until then, investors need to be prepared for choppy, news-driven volatile markets.

OF course, some major event/news (war with Iran?, trade agreement with China?) can throw a monkey wrench into all the best expectations and why as investors we always need a plan “b” … just in case.