We hit two milestones with our Datafeed Upgrade project during the past week. First, the upgraded data connections for our older Thomson feed were installed on Friday. The problems we had last summer were because there was too much data to fit through our 3 megabit data connections. We now... READ MORE
I haven't heard anyone in the media talking about the January Barometer, which is based on the view that "as January goes, so goes the year". That's probably because they only talk about it when the market has a strong January, which predicts a... READ MORE
Hello Fellow ChartWatchers! First off I just want to take a second and say "Welcome" to all of our new members. Since January 1st, almost 1,000 new members have joined StockCharts.com(!). That's almost triple the rate at which we normally get new members and... READ MORE
JANUARY BAROMETER PREDICTS BAD YEAR ... I haven't heard anyone in the media talking about the January Barometer, which is based on the view that "as January goes, so goes the year". That's probably because they only talk about it when the market has a... READ MORE
JANUARY BRINGS MONEY BACK INTO FINANCIALS... Although January was a bad month for the market, there were some sector rotations going on beneath the surface. To put things into perspective, Chart 1 plots two leaders (energy and technology) and two laggards (financial and consumer discretionary stocks) against the S&... READ MORE
FED CUTS AGAIN... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return tomorrow. - Editor The Fed cut the Fed funds rate 0.5% to 3% this afternoon. This is the second cut in the last nine days and the sixth rate cut since August 17.... READ MORE
WORLD MARKETS FALL TOGETHER ... Just before leaving on my trip to Europe, I expressed serious skepticism about the recent theory of global decoupling. Holders of that questionable theory were brought back to reality by the plunge in Asian and European markets the following Monday (while the U.S. market was... READ MORE
GOLD AND SILVER SURGE... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return next week. - Editor The streetTRACKS Gold ETF (GLD) and the Silver ETF (SLV) surged this past week. On the commodity exchanges, gold broke back above $900 and silver moved back above $16.... READ MORE
A LOOK AT THE BIGGER PICTURE... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return next week. - Editor The S&P 500 has experienced two big trends over the last eight years. Let's look at these big trends to understand more about... READ MORE
SMALL-CAPS LEAD MARKET REBOUND... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return next week. - Editor The stock market rebounded in the afternoon with the Russell 2000 leading the major indices higher. This small-cap index gained over 3% and market volume was well... READ MORE
FED CUTS RATES TO BOLSTER STOCKS... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return next week. - Editor With stock markets around the world falling sharply on Monday, the Fed stepped in ahead of schedule by cutting both the Fed funds rate and the discount... READ MORE
The two most frequently asked questions these days are as follows: (1) Are we in a bear market? (2) Where's the bottom? Let's take them one at a time. A bear market is generally defined as a decline of 20% or more. At the close on... READ MORE
The Materials SPDR (XLB) joined the double top club with a sharp decline this past week. The Finance SPDR (XLF) and Consumer Discretionary SPDR (XLY) started the club with double top support breaks in August. The Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) broke double top support in November. And finally, the S&... READ MORE
On January 8 the 50-EMA crossed down through the 200-EMA on the S&P 500 daily chart, generating a long-term sell signal and declaring that we are now in a bear market. This was confirmed this week when the weekly 17-EMA crossed down through the... READ MORE
The bull market is over; the Dow Industrials broke below its major bull market trendline extending from the 1982 bear market lows through the 2002 bear market lows. Obviously, one cannot take this lightly, as last week's negative price action was more of a bear market "exclamation... READ MORE
Here are three things that everyone should do periodically to ensure that your computer works well when using StockCharts.com. Every day we get messages from lots of people that are having problems with their web browser and usually one of these steps will fix the problem. If you follow... READ MORE
I've expressed reservations before about the recent theory of global decoupling. The reasoning was that foreign markets would remain relatively immune to a major selloff (and possible recession) in the U.S. That view struck me as strange, especially with the close correlation that's existed between... READ MORE
Lots of people are doing the Chicken Little thing these days. Is the concern/panic justified? Are we really entering a new Bear market? Which charts are going to calmly and objectively tell us what is really going on? Whenever I want to study "the big picture" and... READ MORE
SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL DECOUPLING ... I've expressed reservations before about the recent theory of global decoupling. The reasoning was that foreign markets would remain relatively immune to a major selloff (and possible recession) in the U.S. That view struck me as strange, especially with the close correlation... READ MORE
AUGUST LOWS ARE BROKEN ... On Tuesday, I wrote that a break of the August lows by the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite would confirm that the stock market has entered into a new bear trend. The reasoning comes down to a simple definition of a... READ MORE
COPPER WAS OLD LEADER ... A lot of questions have cropped up this week about what commodities as an asset class do in an economic downturn, and which commodities (if any) are more immune. During a recession (which often follows a stock market peak), most commodity markets do suffer pullbacks. Some... READ MORE
U.S. DOLLAR INDEX SURGES ... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return tomorrow. - Editor Comments from the European Central Bank (ECB) sent the euro tumbling and the U.S. Dollar Index ($USD) surging on Wednesday. Yves Mersch, an ECB council member, commented that... READ MORE
MORE OF THE SAME... With each passing day, the economic news keeps getting worse. Today it was terrible fourth quarter earnings by Citigroup and very weak retail spending. As a result, financial and consumer discretionary stocks were the day's biggest losers as they've been doing for... READ MORE
LAND OF THE RISING YEN ... Last August 14, I showed this same chart with a warning that the rising Japanese yen threatened the global carry trade. At the time, the yen/dollar chart was just breaking through its two-year down trendline (see circle). Since then the chart has gotten... READ MORE
CRB HITS NEW RECORD... Commodity markets are on a roll. As evidence of that, the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index is trading over 370 today for the first time in its history (Chart 1). That puts the commodity index well above its spring 2006 high. And the rally is broad-based... READ MORE
DOWNSIDE WEEKLY MOMENTUM LIMITS DAILY BOUNCES... I keep emphasizing the importance of long-term indicators. That's why I wrote yesterday that I doubted that the mid-week rally attempt would get very far in the face of deteriorating weekly and monthly technical indicators. "Daily" charts give... READ MORE
BERNANKE BOUNCE ... The stock market continued the short-term bounce that began with yesterday's upside reversal day. The 5-minute bars in Chart 1 show two bursts of buying taking place at 12:15 and 2:15 in the S&P 500 SPDRs. The 12:15 spurt... READ MORE
OVERSOLD TECHS FIND SOME FOOTING... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return tomorrow. - Editor After becoming oversold, the stock market rebounded on Wednesday with techs leading the way. As Chart 1 shows, the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQQ) gained over 2% and formed a... READ MORE
AT&T PLUNGE STARTS SELLOFF... It's always dangerous to attribute a market selloff to one stock, especially a market that has so much working against it. Today, however, a plunge in the stock of AT&T starting around 2:30 may have started the late selloff... READ MORE
WEAKNESS IN THE DOW TRANSPORTS IS BAD SIGN ... A lot of information (both market and economic) can be found in the interaction between the three Dow Averages. The most common is the relationship between the Dow Industrials and Transports, which is referred to as Dow Theory. That theory holds that... READ MORE
We've been following the bond market closely and for good reason. Earnings and interest rates drive the stock market. We are seeing a lot of signs of an economic slowdown, perhaps even a mild recession. As a result, earnings will not be spectacular and we'll likely... READ MORE
The Fed started cutting interest rates on August 17th with a surprise 50 basis points cut in the Discount Rate. There have been three more rate cuts since 17-Aug, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average has nothing to show for these cuts. The first two rate cuts fueled the... READ MORE
Currently, the stock market is still in the process of retesting the November lows. This process needs to end now or some serious technical damage will be done, specifically the long-term rising trend line is in danger of being decisively violated. On the chart below you can see the... READ MORE
The S&P 500 is off to its worst start to begin a new year since 2000; however, this isn't the larger headline to us. If were writing the story, the headline would indicate the probability of a bear market having begun rose significantly last week; but... READ MORE
Just what you wanted right? Actually, this is the "Ticker Rain" that we talked about in the last newsletter. It is finally up on our website at https://stockcharts.com/charts/tickerrain.html. What is "Ticker Rain" you ask? It's a Java program that... READ MORE
During the August market drop, I wrote about the importance of the 400-day moving average as a major support line. [That line is gotten by converting the 20-month moving average to a daily line. I'll show why we use that line shortly]. The daily bars in... READ MORE
Hello Fellow ChartWatchers! Welcome to 2008! The start of a new year is always a good time to look for the big-picture perspective on things and few things say "Big Picture" better than the Bullish Percent Indices. By condensing the technical picture for 500 important stocks down... READ MORE
S&P 500 THREATENS 400-DAY MOVING AVERAGE... During the August market drop, I wrote about the importance of the 400-day moving average as a major support line. [That line is gotten by converting the 20-month moving average to a daily line. I'll show why... READ MORE
MONTHLY INDICATORS WEAKEN ... It's very easy to get caught up in daily (and even weekly) market swings. That's especially true for those of us who follow the markets on a daily basis. There's an awful lot of confusion about the state of the stock... READ MORE
STOCK MARKET WEAKNESS CONTINUES... Today's Market Message was written by Arthur Hill. John Murphy will return tomorrow. - Editor Stocks pulled back on low volume after Christmas, but volume and the decline picked up steam on Wednesday. Both the Nasdaq Composite and the NY Composite fell sharply on Wednesday... READ MORE