Stocks & Treasuries Looking to Diverge
With indications of morning weakness, the Dow, S&P 500 and S&P 400 will be breaking down from their six-week digestion patterns. Amazingly, for the past six weeks these indices have basically traded from high to low inside the range they saw on September 9 & 12. This action does not change my thinking about a continuing pullback and not some large scale collapse. The first thing I want to see is whether this potential breakdown is held for more than […]
Read More
Date: October 13, 2016
Pullback Mode Remains the Short-Term Theme
My general theme of pullback mode for stocks continues in all of the major indices except for the NASDAQ 100. Gold and silver have been a more exciting story, but they, too, have paused since I wrote about them last week. Sector leadership remains very strong with semis, banks, transports and energy near their highs at the same time the defensive group has been weak. I wrote about consumer staples looking especially troubled a few weeks ago and nothing has […]
Read More
Date: October 11, 2016
Canaries in the Coal Mine Part I – The Major Indices
For the past month, four of the five major indices have been in pullback mode after three of the five spent the previous month digesting gains from the huge post-BREXIT rally. While that theme continues today, I think the market is getting closer to resuming its uptrend with the Dow heading to 19,000. Turning to the purpose of this article, I am going to first go through the major indices in the context of canaries in the coal mine to […]
Read More
Date: October 10, 2016
Gold & Silver Stocks Take a Pounding
Just a very quick post as I am in catch up mode from being out on Mon and Tues with the Jewish holiday as well as working on month and quarter end reconciliation and reporting for the next week. The story of Tuesday was the collapse in gold and silver and the stocks. It was an ugly rout, but not unexpected given the somewhat bearish chart pattern below. I wanted to point out that this 28% decline may be close […]
Read More
Date: October 5, 2016
Sell Signal Closed Out. New Leadership Emerged
Today is the last day of the month as well as the last day of the quarter. The S&P 500 closed down -0.12% in August and is on track to close down in September unless the bulls can mount a major offensive, which I am not ruling out, and close above 2071. That means a down August and September for the S&P in a presidential election year, something not seen since 1956. You can put that in the category of […]
Read More
Date: September 30, 2016
Clinton or Trump? Who the Markets Want
The happiest moment of my Monday evening was when Lester Holt said, “that concludes the first of three presidential debates”. Talk about painful. I was SO thankful that I had picture in picture so I could also watch an incredibly entertaining football game between the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints. High scoring and lots of action. I thought Trump started off so well and I actually naively thought that it was going to be a real debate about policy. […]
Read More
Date: September 28, 2016
Post-FOMC Sell Continues as Does Pullback Mode
Our post-FOMC sell signal from Thursday’s close remains in place. That short-term trade will end this week. Stocks begin the week on the defensive as Europe and Asia are showing red. The media will likely blame it on pre-debate jitters, but that’s just nonsense. Pullback mode remains in place as it has been for the past few weeks. As I keep mentioning, it should not be a big deal. The Dow and S&P 500 continue to be the weak sister […]
Read More
Date: September 26, 2016
Fed Trend Says Sell but Fedex Gives Thumbs Up
After Thursday’s strength, one of our post-FOMC trading systems gave a sell signal and that calls for weakness over the next 3-5 days. This has a high degree of accuracy, greater than 75%. If stocks rally further on Friday, it will trigger another trend calling for lower prices with a hit rate above 85%. If correct, this should just be a quick and relatively mild bout of weakness that can be bought for another move to new highs on the […]
Read More
Date: September 22, 2016
I Screwed Up
Yesterday, I said that all of our Fed related trends were muted to less than 60% accuracy. That was wrong. One of our best Fed systems said there was a 78% likelihood that stocks rallied. I didn’t realize this until well after 2pm when it was too late to email and take advantage. What a powerful response to the Fed not raising rates and issuing a more hawkish statement, exactly what I and most others predicted. I did find it […]
Read More
Date: September 22, 2016
Yellen Set to Raise Rates, But…
As the Fed’s Open Market Committee meeting heads into day two, our own trends and systems for the trading day are surprisingly mute. Today typically sees stocks trade in a +.50% to -.50% band until 2 pm before the market gets a shot of volatility. Usually, we see a strong upside bias into the close, but the odds of that are under 60% from the usual 75%+. In other words, the edge just isn’t there today. Tomorrow, Friday and early […]
Read More
Date: September 21, 2016
