The Truth About October
With Rosh Hashanah taking me out of the office for two days, I forgot to offer some stats as the sometimes nasty month of October begins. I cannot recall who first alerted me to the breakdown I am about to show so I will just say thanks to my usual cadre of characters whose work I value and respect. Rob Hanna, Ari Wald, Jason Goepfert and Tom McClellan. Overall, October has been better known for stock market bottoms than any […]
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Date: October 3, 2019
Lower End of Range Hit – Can Bulls Make a Stand?
Last week was the single worst week of the year based on seasonal patterns and it certainly lived up to the billing I gave it several times here. Weak seasonality didn’t end last Friday. It extends to the first part of October. For the past few weeks I have been in the trading range / mild pullback camp with an eye on the upper and lower ends of recent range. After stocks failed to exceed the top of the range […]
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Date: October 2, 2019
Stock Market Reaction to Impeachment
Here we go. I remember writing about impeachment in 1998 and hoped and prayed the country wouldn’t have to experience this kind of political circus again. It took 21 years, but the circus is back in D.C. Thankfully, since we only have two prior, modern day instances of impeachment, stock market results are certainly not statistically significant. Given that, however, let’s take a look at the environments surrounding each of the prior two along with where we are today. First, […]
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Date: September 27, 2019
Void of Relevant Data Makes Market Vulnerable to Headlines
With the Fed meeting behind us and earning season still a few weeks away, the markets are now acutely focused on geopolitical news. In other words, the markets are very susceptible to the latest headline or tweet. From my seat, stocks remain in a little range which I mentioned on Monday and you can see below on the right side of the chart bound by the purple line and blue line. While stocks could pop a little in very short-term, […]
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Date: September 25, 2019
Weak Week Clouds Short-Term Picture
Welcome to the single weakest week of the year, at least that’s what history suggests over the past 30 years or so. The five days after September options expiration have not been kind to the stock market overall. I should have done a little more digging to see how stocks behaved when they were already in uptrends heading into this week. Usually, September is much weaker when it begins with weakness, as I wrote about in The Myth of September’s […]
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Date: September 23, 2019
THE Weakest Seasonality of the Year is Here
Stocks are looking a little tired. That’s my take today. The bulls have tried twice to score new highs, but the bears have put up a little resistance over the past two weeks. While I do not believe the market is on the verge of a bear market or even a 10% decline, risk/reward is no longer tilted strongly towards the bulls. And that’s okay. FYI, next week is the weakest week of the year on an historical basis for […]
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Date: September 20, 2019
Stocks Were Looking for an Excuse to Pull Back
While stocks had another nice run last week, they didn’t exactly close Friday with much strength. That’s not surprising given how most of the major stock market indices were pushing up against all-time highs. So many times, we will a see security come back up and say hello to a previous important peak, only to watch it pause or mildly pullback first. The weekend news about Iran or Yemen conducting drone attacks on Saudi refining facilities was just what the […]
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Date: September 16, 2019
Bears Continue to Laugh & Scoff and Be Embarrassingly Wrong
When listening to the pundits and reading my Twitter feed over the past month or so, it has been fairly negative which it has basically been for the majority of the bull market with few key exceptions like January 2018. Whenever I prepare for a media segment, I usually start by saying that no one has been more bullish than I have on balance for the entire bull market. Most of my quantitative, upside price targets for the Dow were […]
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Date: September 13, 2019
Bears Getting Impaled
The bulls have been relentless of late, which should certainly not surprise anyone who reads this blog. I have been emphatically bullish, especially on semis and defensives, and looking for Dow 28,000. I can’t find many or really any others who have been as uniquely bullish as I have been. I don’t count anyone who believes that you should always be positive on the stock market because it will reward you over the very long-term. That’s a cop out. But […]
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Date: September 12, 2019
The Myth of September’s Gloom
As the calendar turned to September, the media was in their usual tizzy because historically, the month has the worst performance of any during the year. The problem with making very general statements is that context is ignored. It wasn’t long ago when all the headlines were about how strong the month of December was and everyone was all bulled up because stocks had corrected 10% in October and November. Then stocks collapsed in December like hadn’t been seen since […]
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Date: September 9, 2019
