Bulls Fighting to Begin the Year But Apple, Apple, Apple
After opening down 400 points on the first trading day of 2019, the bulls fought back really hard to erase 100% of that loss by the close and eke out a small gain. That was very impressive. Leadership came from the most beaten down sectors from 2018, energy and financials. That’s not surprising. So many investors sold those names during Q4 for tax loss reasons as well as window dressing to make their portfolio holdings look better than they actually […]
Read More
Date: January 3, 2019
Big Gains to Close the Year But the Bulls Remain on Their Heels
Welcome to 2019! I hope you had an enjoyable and safe New Year’s. We had an absolutely wild and crazy one. It was one for the ages! I think my wife and I were fast asleep by 11pm although I am told that the kids were up until 1am. It’s good to be young. We were in Vermont and had some folks over for a very low key evening as yet another non snow producing winter storm came through as […]
Read More
Date: January 1, 2019
Bulls and Santa Claus Making a Stand. One Indicator for the All Clear
December has already set all kinds of precedents going back to the 1800s, including depth of decline, speed of decline, length of decline and intensity of decline. Remember, stocks just don’t decline all that often in December, ESPECIALLY during a mid-term election year where Q4 and December has almost always been like shooting fish in a barrel. I had to go all the way back to 1931 to find anything remotely similar, but let’s face it, price analogs that old […]
Read More
Date: December 30, 2018
Extreme Selling Leads to Rare & Immediate Reaction
After already discussing the legendary selling wave stocks experienced this month through December 24th, one of the sub models within our big stock market model triggered a scenario based on historic levels of overdone selling that has only been seen a handful of times since 1980. Each and every time, stocks saw significant gains almost immediately, even when in the context of a bear market. You can see all of these on the charts below with the arrows pointing to […]
Read More
Date: December 25, 2018
The REAL Santa Claus Rally
All month I have heard the pundits say that the Santa Claus Rally has failed or that Santa failed to call so bears will come to Broad and Wall, popularized by Yale Hirsch of Stocks Trader’s Almanac fame. What incenses me is that those people just blurted and babbled nonsense. The Santa Claus Rally (SCR) doesn’t begin until the last five days of the year and continues for the first two days of the next year. In other words, it […]
Read More
Date: December 24, 2018
From Lower Levels, a Bottom Coming
After last week, I am running out of adjectives to describe the stock market decline since December 3. Relentless seemed like the best word a week ago, but now it’s almost an understatement. Although I thought I had written my last long update before the Fed meeting, I had also thought that stocks would at least see a temporary low. I was wrong on both counts and am working on another update now. Almost every day last week looked similar. […]
Read More
Date: December 23, 2018
Relentless Selling Wave Continues
It seems like every time I sit down to start a new post over the past few weeks, I am looking at the same data, indicators and price behavior. Stocks closed the day before lower and look like they have a chance to bounce but end up closing lower yet again. I thought when I started writing about relentless selling, it would end sooner than later. And here we are again; stocks fell hard on Thursday with the glimmer of […]
Read More
Date: December 21, 2018
The Absolute Arrogance, Ignorance & Incompetence of the Fed
Here we go. Cue the media’s hype. “The single most important Fed meeting, perhaps of All-TIME!” Oh brother. Model for the Day Let’s start with the model for the day. As with every Fed statement day, 90% of the time stocks stay in a plus or minus .50% range until 2pm before the fireworks take place. With pre-market action indicating a much higher open, the opportunity is there for a momentum trade to the upside from the open until 2pm […]
Read More
Date: December 19, 2018
Ugliness for the Bulls Rolls On. May Need More Panic
Most of the past few weeks when I sat down to start a new post I thought, “well, yesterday wasn’t very nice for the bulls”. Today, as I sit on the train to New York, I am thinking that Friday and Monday were downright ugly for the bulls. The bad Friday, bad Monday combination, regardless of whether this remains a bull market or not is something typically seen near lows which is where I think the market is. Similar to […]
Read More
Date: December 18, 2018
Is It a Bear Market???
In rare fashion, the bears are certainly in charge this quarter, but especially this month. Historically, it’s very difficult to see stocks under constant pressure during Q4, let alone December. The usual catalysts for decline are typically seasonally absent. While that doesn’t mean that stocks can’t decline this late in the year, a decline of the magnitude we are currently experiencing is very rare. 2002 saw a 6% decline in December and 1968 and 1957 had 4% declines, but that’s […]
Read More
Date: December 17, 2018
