Last week the market broke out of a month-long rounded top to new, all-time highs. This week there was a short snapback to the point of breakout, then on Wednesday it once again broke to new, all-time highs. Thursday and Friday it again pulled back to the point of breakout.... READ MORE
Remember the bygone advertisements from years past about hair replacement? The gentleman stares into the camera and says “I’m not just the president of the Men’s Hair Club, but I am also a client.” Our ChartPack deserves a similar endorsement. “I’m not just the creator of the... READ MORE
No new changes on the DecisionPoint Scoreboards although I happen to know there is an intermediate-term PMO BUY signal waiting in the wings on the NDX. That signal will not go final until after Friday's trading. Utilities SPDR (XLU) and the equal-weight Utilities ETF (RYU) both garnered IT... READ MORE
Biotechnology stocks ($DJUSBT) are among the best performing stocks since the beginning of June with an approximate 16% gain over the past seven weeks. It's not unusual for biotechs to remain on a tear for an extended period of time so pullbacks should be considered for entry. The... READ MORE
The Relative Rotation Graph above holds the constituents of the Materials sector (XLB). The picture shows a fairly evenly distributed pattern with no real stocks standing out, maybe with the exception of MOS as it has the longest tail of all stocks on the graph while being at the lowest... READ MORE
Market Recap for Wednesday, July 19, 2017 Energy (XLE, +1.46%) and materials (XLB, +0.96%) led the major U.S. indices to all-time highs on Wednesday, with particular strength in coal ($DJUSCL) and renewable energy ($DWCREE), which rose 6.36% and 3.08%, respectively. The former's strength... READ MORE
* What is a confidence indicator? * Credit Spreads to the rescue * Equity market spreads * Growth versus Value * Small caps: Are we there yet? Washington may be suffering from acute dysfunction but Wall Street doesn’t seem to care, or perhaps knows something that we mere mortals do not. Failure to agree... READ MORE
FALLING DOLLAR BOOSTS EMERGING MARKET CURRENCIES... One of my recent messages explained that a weak dollar was contributing to money flows into foreign markets. That's because American investors get the dual benefit of rising foreign currencies as well as stocks. That's been especially true in emerging... READ MORE
Market Recap for Tuesday, July 18, 2017 It was a rough June for technology stocks and, more specifically, internet stocks ($DJUSNS), but they've both rebounding during an exceptional July. It appears that traders have re-entered this space in anticipation of very strong upcoming quarterly earnings reports. It'... READ MORE
The above Relative Rotation Graph holds the main commodity groups (BCOM family) and uses the Bloomberg Commodity Index as the benchmark. The opposite directions in the rotations of Industrial metals ($BCOMINTR) and Precious metals ($BCOMPRTR) stand out for me. As they are both on the right-hand side of the graph... READ MORE
No new changes to report on the DecisionPoint Scoreboards, although if you didn't read about it last Friday, we did see FOUR new PMO BUY signals on all four indexes. The only "red" on the Scoreboards are on the IT PMO signals which are found on... READ MORE
Market Recap for Monday, July 17, 2017 It seems that every major U.S. index is taking its turn at all-time highs and on Monday small cap stocks stepped up to the plate, closing at 1431.60, its highest close ever. It's interesting because it did so on... READ MORE
I will attempt to show that high sigma is a much more frequent event than modern finance thinks it is. A few examples using the Dow Industrials back to 1885 on a daily basis are shown. Each begins with determining a look-back period to determine the average daily return and... READ MORE
CHINESE ECONOMY EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS... China's economy grew by 6.9% during the second quarter which exceeded market expectations. That's one of the explanations behind today's jump in industrial metals like copper, iron ore, and zinc. Mining stocks that produce those commodities are also having... READ MORE
Market Recap for Friday, July 14, 2017 JPMorgan (JPM), Citigroup (C), PNC Financial (PNC) and Wells Fargo (WFC) were a formidable sample of bank stocks ($DJUSBK) reporting earnings last Friday and it was set up to be a very interesting trading day - to see if the huge run up... READ MORE
When money begins rotating to defense in a big way, I look for topping patterns in the market. But when we're in the midst of a full-fledged bull market - as we are now - I'd much rather search for stocks in bullish continuation patterns. That... READ MORE
BOND YIELDS DROP ON LACK OF INFLATION ... June's CPI report showed no change from the previous month, reflecting the absence of inflation. Its annual gain of 1.6% was the smallest since last October. Excluding food and energy, the core CPI saw a modest monthly bounce of 0.... READ MORE
Q2 Earnings Season is underway with 4 of the nations largest banks reporting their numbers Friday and thousands of companies getting ready to report over the next few weeks. Earnings season brings with it both the highs and lows of trading. We'll see companies that beat expectations and... READ MORE
As a stock market historian, if there's one thing that really annoys me, it's the talking heads saying to "go away in May". While the May through October period is clearly less bullish than its November through April counterpart, there are loads of reasons... READ MORE
Rounded top, schmounded top. This week the market couldn't have cared less as it broke through to new, all-time highs. The headline regarding the dollar is not exactly news, but the dollar is getting particularly weak. More on that below. The DecisionPoint Weekly Wrap presents an end-of-week assessment... READ MORE
Regular readers have been following the epic saga dating back to 2011, when Dr. Hank Pruden published his Point and Figure (PnF) count for the new bull market. This count projected to a range of 17,600 to 19,200 for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU). When this objective... READ MORE
There were four new Short-Term PMO BUY signals generated on the DecisionPoint Scoreboards today. The new signal summary is below as well as the charts for your review. Have a great weekend! Helpful DecisionPoint Links: DecisionPoint Shared ChartList and DecisionPoint Chart Gallery Trend Models Price Momentum Oscillator (PMO) On Balance... READ MORE
On Fridays during the MarketWatchers LIVE show (12:00p - 1:30p EST), I do a regular segment that checks what weekly sentiment charts are telling us. Three of the best sentiment charts from DecisionPoint are the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) sentiment poll, the National Association of Active... READ MORE
Ninety percent (90%) of Americans believe that they are above average drivers. Multiple studies have corroborated this impossibility over the years. I’m certain that the equivalent surveys of American investors would yield a similar fanciful number. It reminds me of Garrison Keillor’s radio show featuring Lake Wobegon — the... READ MORE
BOND YIELDS DROP ON LACK OF INFLATION ... June's CPI report showed no change from the previous month, reflecting the absence of inflation. Its annual gain of 1.6% was the smallest since last October. Excluding food and energy, the core CPI saw a modest monthly bounce of 0.... READ MORE
Market Recap for Thursday, July 13, 2017 Financials (XLF, +0.60%) rebounded to lead the market action on Thursday, in anticipation of large bank earnings scheduled to be reported this morning. The Dow Jones U.S. Banks Index ($DJUSBK) remains in a strong technical pattern, but has room to the... READ MORE
No changes on the DecisionPoint Scoreboards. They all look the same which might be a little confusing given the bifurcated market we have witnessed over the past few weeks. While most indexes are testing all-time highs, the NDX needs more help and today it couldn't get past the... READ MORE
CANADA RATE HIKE BOOSTS THE LOONIE... Canada warned that it was about to hike rates, and did it yesterday for the first time in seven years. The Bank of Canada raised its short-term policy rate 25 basis points to 0.75%. That's still below the rate of 1.... READ MORE
1. Some Global Equity Markets Getting Lift-off Again 2. US equities trying to follow the global lead 3. Relative trends favor emerging and Europe 4. Technology poised to move higher In terms of price, global equities have been in a corrective mode since late May, but now appear to be... READ MORE
Market Recap for Wednesday, July 13, 2017 Fed Chair Janet Yellen provided the Fed's semiannual monetary policy to the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday morning, just prior to the opening of the stock market and both the bond market and stock market loved what it heard. The... READ MORE
Yet again, more whipsaw on the DecisionPoint Scoreboards. The Short-Term Trend Model (STTM) is highly sensitive given that it is based on 5/20-EMA crossovers. However, the main problem we have is consolidation. Price hit all-time highs, but has continued to meander sideways. This will draw the EMAs together and... READ MORE
FALLING DOLLAR MAY GIVE FED A HAND... Bonds and stocks are reacting very positively to written comments by Janet Yellen before Congress today. Her comments are being interpreted as being more dovish than anticipated, owing mainly to Fed concerns about persistently low inflation. It's hard for the Fed... READ MORE
Market Recap for Tuesday, July 11, 2017 Only two of nine sectors - energy (XLE, +0.54%) and technology (XLK, +0.22%) were able to finish in positive territory on Tuesday. Given that overall weakness, it was interesting to see that only one of our major indices lost ground (S&... READ MORE
Periodically I write an article that reviews the past few months of articles. Why on Earth would I do this? Primarily for two reasons. One is that many new readers are involved and often they do not go back and look at the past articles. Two is that my articles... READ MORE
The Relative Rotation Graph above shows the relative rotation, on a weekly basis, for the G10 currencies using the USD as the base. For a better understanding of how to use RRGs to monitor currency rotation please refer to this blog article on the subject. Looking at the RRG above... READ MORE
No new signal changes on the DecisionPoint Scoreboards, but we did see three new Intermediate-Term Trend Model (ITTM) Neutral signals generate on three different sectors. Utilities, Consumer Discretionary and Consumer Staples. It's odd to see both Consumer Staples and Discretionary hitting bearish signals, but I think that is... READ MORE
Market Recap for Monday, July 10, 2017 The NASDAQ and S&P 500 rallied on Monday, posting gains of 0.38% and 0.09%, respectively. The small cap Russell 2000 index was easily the worst performing major index, losing 0.52% on the session. Despite the weakness, the Russell... READ MORE
* The Long-term indicators * Gold in Euro and Yen looking sick * Dollar based Gold completes head and shoulders top gold shares not quite there yet * Silver showing signs of tiredness * Stocks breaking out against Gold * The silver lining for Gold Several articles I have written in the last few weeks have... READ MORE
Market Recap for Friday, July 7, 2017 Dow Jones component McDonalds Corp (MCD) jumped more than 2% on Friday, extending an already strong 2017 with another all-time high closing breakout. It helped to lead a strong restaurants & bars ($DJUSRU) industry, which rose 1.26%. That, in turn, helped the... READ MORE
Higher treasury yields ($TNX) are feared in some parts of the stock market like utilities (XLU), but not in others - especially in banking ($DJUSBK) and life insurance ($DJUSIL) where profits tend to soar during periods of rising interest rates. The recent spike in the 10 year treasury yield ($TNX)... READ MORE