Taxes, Retirement and Your Investment Strategies
In response to the economic hardship caused by COVID-19, the federal government extended this year’s tax-filing deadline from April 15 to July 15. The state of Connecticut also extended the deadline to match the new date. While this obviously gave Americans more time to file and pay any amount owed to Uncle Sam, this extension of the tax-filing deadline offers a number of other financial benefits – if you use it to your advantage. There are many long-term and short-term […]
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Date: August 3, 2020
NASDAQ 100 Ceding Leadership
When we left off on Monday, it was time for the bulls to step up in technology as the insanely strong momentum streak had ended. Let’s give the bulls credit; they stepped up in a big way on Monday. However, that move was almost fully reversed on Tuesday. We have a good old fashioned tug o’ war as some of the NASDAQ 100’s largest components are set to release earnings. I will continue to take the glass half empty side […]
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Date: July 29, 2020
Momentum Streak Ends for NASDAQ 100
On Friday I wrote about the NASDAQ 100 crossing a very obvious line in the sand that “everyone” has been watching. Remember, the NASDAQ 100 which is heavily weighted to Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft had not closed below its average price of the past month since early April. In fact, I don’t even think it has seen back to back down days since early May. That’s a feat! In other words, it has had historically strong momentum. With […]
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Date: July 27, 2020
NASDAQ 100 Crossing Line in the Sand
This is going to be a really short update because I am way behind schedule and stocks have been behaving as I have spelled out for two weeks. Today’s close will be somewhat important for the short-term as the bulls are on their heels, especially those playing momentum stocks. For weeks, I have written about the NASDAQ 100’s idiosyncratic behavior versus the other four major stock market indices. You can search the archives to read about how stretched this index […]
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Date: July 24, 2020
NASDAQ 100 Reverses Again – Banks Need Some Lovin’
Continuing on my theme of a possible pullback or correction, the NADSAQ 100 has now reversed twice from the same level in two weeks. That means early strength has twice been thwarted by the bears with the tech index closing near its low for the day. You can see that in the two arrows below. We now have a very clear line in the sand drawn. If the bulls are to win, they will quickly close above the 11,100 level […]
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Date: July 22, 2020
Bulls Could Push for One More High Before Pulling Back
On Friday, I wrote about the Window of Opportunity for a stock market decline. I definitely did not say that stocks were about to plummet. The conditions were building that the chance for a bout of weakness was growing IF the NASDAQ 100 rolled over and IF the other major stock market indices did not surge. I also wrote that I thought it could be a July or August story for the window to be open and not a very […]
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Date: July 20, 2020
Social Security and COVID-19: 5 Things You Should Know
We’re more than halfway through 2020 and one thing is abundantly clear – the Coronavirus is just as much a financial crisis as it is a health crisis. Millions of Americans have watched their nest eggs dwindle due to stock market declines, layoffs and furloughs. This crisis has affected us all, but anyone retiring in the next year or two is especially vulnerable as they prepare to pull from retirement accounts and collect Social Security. When conducting a financial analysis […]
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Date: July 20, 2020
Window of Opportunity Opening for a Broad Stock Market Decline
On Wednesday, for those were able to read to the end of the update, I did something I haven’t done in a while, broach the idea that stocks could could go down for more than a brief pullback. I continue to warm to that idea. Let’s start with the top chart below which is 10 and 20 day average of the NASDAQ volume versus NYSE volume. You can see that since the bull market launched on March 23rd, there has […]
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Date: July 17, 2020
Sea Change? Dow Industrials Exploding Higher
On Monday, I offered some comments about the pathetic banks into earnings. JP Morgan was first and they got some love. Goldman was this morning and they should get even more love. The call wasn’t that difficult as sentiment was just so negative and fearful. In almost every post over the last two plus months I have separated the major stock market indices away from the NASDAQ 100 which was behaving very idiosyncratically. Over the past few sessions, there has […]
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Date: July 15, 2020
Opportunities in the Financials
Q2 earnings season begins this week with the much maligned financial sector up first. I think there is opportunity here as the sector has been straight down since its peak on June 8th. While I would love to see one more selloff to new July lows on the first round of reports, I recognize that being too cute forces you to miss the boat sometimes. I would hate to see great reports and the stocks take off right away. That […]
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Date: July 13, 2020
