As bullish as I have been, and I don’t think many have been as positive as I have been, the stock market is now starting to surprise even me on the upside. Coming in to the week, stocks were looking a little tired and in need of some rest, either by going sideways for a few weeks or by seeing a mild pullback of 1-3%. Instead, stocks are continuing to move higher although the rate of acceleration has slowed. I […]
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After my research on post-crash behavior was complete, I turned to stock market performance. With both August and September closing lower, I wondered if there was any trend for Q4. Over the past 35 years, there were only 6 occurrences and all led to a positive Q4 by an average of +10.86%! You can view the study here. http://investfortomorrowblog.com/archives/1936 With the help of my friend and colleague Dana Lyons, http://jlfmi.tumblr.com, I analyzed stock market returns since 1950 when the S&P […]
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After a huge win for the bulls last week, stocks have become very short-term overbought. I don’t think the rally is over nor do I think any meaningful weakness will unfold. Rather, I think the bulls need a pause to refresh which can be accomplished by going sideways for a period of time or seeing a quick pullback. Either way, new highs should be up next and buying any weakness is the strategy until proven otherwise. Am I certain that […]
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After two straight down days and four days of pause overall, the bulls roared back to life on Thursday as you would normally expect during a powerful move off a bottom. It’s that first mild pullback from a significant low where the bears get a little excited that it could be another leg down, but all of the Johnny Come Lately bulls realize it may be their last chance to get on board. More pain for the bears. Recent sentiment […]
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Although I have been struggling to find enough stocks behaving constructively in the 9 major sectors to lead the next rally, I still do not see a meaningfully bearish scenario at this point for Q4. Besides the post crash trend, which can be viewed HERE, HERE and HERE, almost every sentiment indicator is showing excessive pessimism, which translates into positive returns going forward this quarter. After the month of August closed down, I shared two separate studies that indicated that […]
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The only thing missing from a “perfect” pattern is for the S&P 500 to breach the August lows for up to a few days. I hesitate to use the word “perfect” because it rarely plays out exactly as I expect, but it certainly did so in 2011. Additionally, in both 1987 and 1989 which I partially dismissed, the final lows did not breach the crash lows before the big rally began. As you can see from the chart above, I […]
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Immediately after the August 24 mini crash, I opined that the bottoming process could begin as early as that very week, which it did. I also wrote extensively and did a fair amount of media discussions on the topic. So far, the major indices are nicely following that scenario which had stocks rallying off the crash low into a September peak and then revisiting that low by the middle of October. Remember the comparisons I offered from 1987, 1989, 1994, […]
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At their worst levels on Thursday, the major stock indices were bludgeoned and downright ugly. The Dow was down to 16,000 and could have been cracked open like a coconut today had the bulls not mounted a very strong late day charge. The rally was somewhat impressive and leaves open the question of whether we just saw the revisiting of the August lows I have spoken about on CNBC’s Fast Money and written about here. With stocks looking up more […]
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The bulls are back to pressing against the upper end of the short-term trading range and should attempt to close above those lines in the sand. On the Dow, the level is 17975 on a closing basis while it’s 2073 on the S&P 500. Both are just a one day rally away. The S&P 400 already saw all time highs last week while the Russell 2000, long left for dead by the market, has a line in the sand at […]
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Earlier this week, I spelled out three possible scenarios for stocks with one very bullish, one mildly bullish and one bearish. I gave most weight to the mildly bullish one and least weight to the bearish one. Right now, stocks are marching more towards the very bullish scenario although the Dow breached the lows I had discussed in the mildly bullish scenario. Looking at the five major indices, the Dow needs to close above 17,850 to set up a run […]
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