Woes & Jitters Stock Market Indicator

One thing that periodically irks me is financial website headline writing. At the close of each day and usually throughout the day, Yahoo Finance proudly displays a single headline to sum up the action of all of the thousands of stocks that make up the stock market.

The headline will usually point to a single identifiable reason which explains everything. Barring a single identifiable reason, the headline may simply proclaim that stocks are "fluctuating."

When the stock market declines, two words that appear in financial headlines with uncanny frequency are "woes" and "jitters."

After experiencing several days of recent declines, you may have witnessed the following headlines:

• "Stocks Lower on [ Fill in the Blank ] Jitters"
• "Stocks Fall on [ Fill in the Blank ] Woes"

Could these ridiculous headlines be utilized as a tool for identifying temporary market bottoms?

Let's look at some charts:


Source: StockCharts.com


Source: Google Trends


Source: Google Trends

You'll see that the "jitters" chart has provided some clear signals for when sell offs were approaching their extremes. The "woes" chart sends less clear signals, but also displays the appropriate spikes.

We are recently coming off a double "woes" and "jitters" spike. Is this ridiculous indicator worth noting?