$RUT UP 12% IN ONE MONTH, UP 254% IN 5 YEARS -- CAT, JOY, DE HAVE STRONG DAY -- FINANCIALS HAVE ANOTHER BIG DAY -- SOME LARGE MARKET ANNIVERSARIES -- A LOOK AT AN INTERESTING CYCLE

$RUT UP 12% IN ONE MONTH, 254 % IN 5 YEARS... The $SPX has obviously been on a serious run since the 3 digit lows of 2009. The rise since those lows has been staggering.
From February 2014 lows:
$SPX 8 %
$COMPQ 10 %
$RUT 12 %

From March 2009 lows:
$SPX 182 %
$COMPQ 245 %
$RUT 254 %

Chart 1 shows the performance of the $RUT. While the charts look the same for the $COMPQ and the $RUT, the performance is significantly better than the $SPX. The $RUT outperformance was 40% better over 5 years.

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Chart 1

CAT, JOY, DE HAVE STRONG DAY... The equipment makers were all performing pretty well today. CAT recently broke through the SCTR 70 line. After a gentle consolidation over the last few weeks, it was just short of a break out to a 22 month high today. The Caterpillar has been flying as of late. Chart 2 shows CAT after metamorphosis.

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Chart 2

Joy Global had a huge intraday range and at one point was up more 10% off the March 3rd low. The SCTR ranking for JOY is substantially weaker than for CAT. JOY missed expectations on their earnings call. Chart 3 shows the intraday range for JOY.

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Chart 3

Deere had a year end rush as farmers bought equipment in last years crop year for tax purposes. Now DE has started another push since Corn and the soft commodities have had some price action higher. When farmers have money, nothing runs like a Deere.
Deere is up 5% in 7 trading days and made one-month highs today. The recent low was a test of horizontal support at $84 as shown in Chart 4.

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Chart 4

FINANCIALS HAVE ANOTHER UP DAY ... After a big push in the financials yesterday, they continued modestly higher. BAC went on to make new highs this morning and then reversed to create a doji candle. Chart 5 shows the 2 day performance of the sectors. The BAC thrust off the support level of $16.00 was very strong as shown in chart 6. It was also a break of the down sloping trend line.

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Chart 5

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Chart 6

MARCH HAS SOME MARKET ANNIVERSARIES... This month marks the 5 year anniversary of the 2009 bottom, the 11 year anniversary of the 2003 bottom and the 14 year anniversary of the 2000 top. We have seen major market turns in March but not really any major turns in March since the 2009 low. The other major turning point was October 2007, with a July high preceding it.

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Chart 7

AN INTERESTING MARKET CYCLE... I don't do a lot on work in cycles, but the cycle tool in StockCharts annotation tool makes it very easy to look at cycles. There are different styles for doing cycle work. George Lindsay noted inflection points that lined up with major highs and major lows. Other cycle work counts the distances between 'top to top' or 'bottom to bottom'.
I particularly like the Lindsay methodology as he had some remarkable calls. That brings me to a final closing chart. I have found interesting cycles at a variety of time frames for the $SPX. You can drag the cycle tool to expand the time between the lines. While looking down in the bottom of your chart, it will display the time frame between cycle lines. I have found some interesting ones at 112 and 227 weeks. However, there is only one cycle I could find that captured the tops and bottoms of all four major turns since 2000. The cycle I like has some interesting multiples at 264 weeks, 198 weeks, 132 weeks. These cycles were too long to catch every major turn using one of them. The most interesting is a common denominator to all four, 66 weeks. I have overlaid the 66 week cycle on Chart 8 of the $SPX starting with the market top in 2000. It does not catch every turn, but 10 out of 11 inflection points were very close.

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Chart 8

The cycle tool is easy to manipulate and without question you try to best fit the tool. Out of the last 15 years, only once did this cycle really miss an inflection point. I have marked that with a blue arrow. I'll leave it to you and the history books to be the judge. I have circled the time span of the lines in the lower left. 66 is shown in gray.
If you look back into the 1990's shown, it did an ok job on the pullback in 1996 and 1997. It totally missed the 1998 pullback, which was big.