look people, you're smart, you can figure this out. this is not specific to the method emo proposed which i know absolutely nothing about, just to not blindly indexing (not saying there is anything wrong with indexing. saying that it is stupid to attack someone for not indexing).
it's just a question of logic. all of these various systems for timing the market rely on the idea that you can improve your overall return if you are able to predict with some degree of accuracy when the market is more likely to go up or down. whether the predictive variable is technical, fundamental, macro, seasonal, whatever, it doesn't matter. they are all derived from past market performance. that is to say that people come up with each and every one of these systems by looking at the past and pulling out some correlate or group of correlates that is associated with periods in which the market behaves as desired.
here is the important part. it is absolutely true that past performance is no guarantee of future performance. and it is possible, even likely, that some of the relationships that people claim to be predictive are spurious. however, these correlations are all based on the exact same data that all of you indexing acolytes are proclaiming as the path to sure 7% annual returns. it is absolutely logically inconsistent to profess confidence that future market returns will approximate those of the past while scoffing at correlations among market performance based on the same data.
