A softly-spoken American, who has made the UK his home since taking a foreign assignment to London in the late 1960s, Mr Fuller is global strategist of Fullermoney.com, an online service giving views and data on the markets. What makes Mr Fuller’s insights so valuable is that he is one of the earliest adopters of technical analysis: the approach of plotting market behaviour to find key turning points and guides to future moves. And his experience in tracking markets for four decades and more gives him the temperament of a man who does not panic at the first sign of trouble or who gets carried away by the latest economic craze.

“My technical approach is essentially behavioural. I describe myself as a technical naturalist, meaning that I observe the crowd, which in markets is driven by sentiment and liquidity,” he told WealthBriefing in a recent interview near his office in London’s King’s Road area of Chelsea. 

Mr Fuller was speaking ahead of a talk in London he is due to give at the Investment Strategies 2010 conference, organised by The Dealers' Group. His talk is on 1 December.

Global stocks have bounced sharply this year – the Morgan Stanley Capital International World Index of developed countries’ indices has shown total returns – capital growth plus reinvested dividends – of an impressive 23 per cent between the start of this year and 2 November. As Mr Fuller explained, the market may continue to rise, but the journey is likely to be a good deal more volatile from here.

“We are overdue for reversion to the mean in terms of 200-day moving averages. At this stage I would no longer be a momentum buyer and use corrections as buying opportunities,” he said.

“If you got a correction now, that will be quite good for people who are easier to pick than the tops because the latter can go on and on, as happened in the dotcom boom, for example.”

“The absolutely gut-wrenching panic that we saw, the blood on the streets – that is an ending. These events are climactic. October 2008 marked the beginning of the end of the bear market, and was therefore also the beginning of the bottoming-out process prior to the next bull market.  That must be the beginning of a bottoming-out,” he said.

“I remember 1973-74, which felt devastating. People said it was the end of capitalism and that they would never invest in the markets again. Similarly, people were forecasting an economic depression after the stock market crash of 1987. People said the same sort of thing this time. Sentiment was just as bearish in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of this year,” he said.  

Mr Fuller’s two main secular investment themes for the medium term, notwithstanding any occasional market squalls, are Asian emerging market growth and resources and infrastructure. His main cyclical theme, based upon any continued market and economic upswing, is technology.

As for foreign exchange, Mr Fuller likes currencies in economies with strong natural resources, such as Brazil or Australia but is concerned about their high valuations at the present time. “On a very long term view, I like resources currencies but not today.”

“The one I like the most for the long-term future is the Chinese renminbi although it is not available right now – it is tied to the dollar – but it eventually will be.”

Mr Fuller is optimistic, to varying degrees, about China, India and Brazil but it is wary of Russia, given some of the political issues in the latter country and its track record of interference with non-Russian investors. 

“The problem is that Russia shows less interest in the rights of minority shareholders,” he added.

To view Mr Fuller's website, click here.