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Traders Should Be Especially Nervous This Week - Art Cashin

September 22, 2014 10:53 AM EDT

Market top calls are like noses these days... everybody's got one. However, one interesting note today comes from famed floor trader Art Cashin and follows Friday's record setting IPO for Alibaba (NYSE: BABA).

Cashin said traders will watch this week closely. "Not only will it contain the Autumnal Equinox but the day that the fabled W.D. Gann called the day more likely to see a reversal than any other day of the year – September 22," he commented.

He pointed to a write-up in 2009 by Barron's editor Randall Forsyth citing the work of now-deceased Paul Macrae Montgomery:

Montgomery recalls living through the October "massacres" of 1978 and 1979, the crash of 1987, the mini-crash of 1989, the 1997 Asian collapse and the Long-Term Capital Markets plunges, which started to cascade downward in late September. And while gold bullion topped in January 1980, gold stocks made their highs on Sept. 22 of that year, he adds. That date also saw the peak in many oil stocks.

Looking back farther, on Sept. 22, 1929, the Dow Jones Utility Index became the final major average to make its high before the Great Crash. And in 1873, a panic forced the New York Stock Exchange to shut down, Montgomery further details.

And who can forget 2008, when markets went into freefall in the days following the collapse of Lehman Brothers? What's remembered less well now is the market chaos in the subsequent days after the House of Representatives initially rejected legislation that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Currencies have seen historic changes around this date as well, he adds. The British pound was taken off the gold standard and was devalued a huge 28% on Sept. 21, 1931. Exactly 54 years later, the Group of Five produced the Plaza Accord, which brought a sharp decline in the dollar and expansion of global liquidity. Black Wednesday, when Britain was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, came a few days early on Sept. 16, 1992.

I also recollect that Treasury note and bond yields made their historic highs in late September, 1981, with shorter maturities hitting 17% and long bonds reaching 15%. That marked the end of a 35-year bear bond market from the end of World War II.

On a side-note, one thing Alibaba CEO Jack Ma wanted to do on Friday was meet and take a picture with Mr. Cashin. Ironic?



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