January 16, 2019

As the NASDAQ Composite Index cleared its 50-dma yesterday, a state of bullish complacency seemed to settle over this current market rally off the Christmas Eve lows. The action looked quite bullish given that it came after more weak economic news out of China, comments from U.S. Trade Rep Robert Lighthizer that no progress had been made in the recent low-level U.S.-China trade... Read More

January 13, 2019

The indexes have spent the past two days consolidating their recent gains. This is consistent with the NASDAQ Composite Index at least pausing as it runs into a logical line of resistance at its 50-dma. Whether this sets up a general market move higher or whether we see a deeper pullback and retest of the Christmas Eve lows is still an open question yet to be answered. However,... Read More

January 9, 2019

The market has kept things rather simple as it continues to follow through on last Friday’s follow-through day. This has been accomplished by the simple fact that there aren’t that many fresh set-ups or even breakouts to choose from if one wants to go aggressively long this market. But the handful of set-ups that have been available have been effective, so far. The NASDAQ Composite... Read More

January 6, 2019

News overnight on Thursday that China confirmed lower-level ministerial trade talks with the U.S. would be held next week, sent global markets and the U.S. futures jacking higher ahead of Friday’s open. When the jobs number was released an hour ahead of the opening bell and came in much stronger than anticipated at 312,000 new jobs allegedly created in December, the futures rolled around indecisively.... Read More

January 2, 2019

A four-day rally attempt looked doomed this morning when the major market indexes gapped down sharply at the open. A 398.87-point decline in the Dow Jones Industrials Index at the intraday lows early in the morning looked scary after news of weak economic data coming out of China sent global markets down sharply overnight. The Caixin Media and HIS Markit PMI fell to 49.4 in December, its lowest... Read More

December 30, 2018

Anyone expecting a quiet holiday trading week around the Christmas holiday this past week may have been pleasantly, or perhaps unpleasantly surprised. Records were set on both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, and this was capped off with an equally wild reversal from a -611-point Dow deficit that turned into a 260-point upside move in the last 90 minutes of trade. In... Read More

December 26, 2018

The market made history on Monday when it posted its largest Christmas Eve decline ever. Until this past Monday, the S&P 500 Index had never posted a greater than -1% decline on Christmas Eve in its history, and all the major market indexes posted their largest Christmas Eve declines in their history. As I wrote over the weekend, the extreme decline we’ve seen off the... Read More

December 23, 2018

My rallying cry, pun intended, this past week, has been to “Short all rallies!” I have not been shy about tweeting and blogging about this idea in real-time over the past couple of weeks. This, so far, has remained a very viable approach as rallies get sold into, time and time again. It worked on Fed Wednesday when the market shot up and it worked again on Friday when the market suddenly shot... Read More

December 19, 2018

Monday brought lower lows for the major market indexes, in line with what I wrote on Wednesday that I was looking for a market move to lower lows, with the S&P 500 Index undercutting and closing below its February low on higher volume. Fears of a government shutdown were cited as the reasons for the sell-off. When things settled down and the warring parties appeared to be near... Read More

December 16, 2018

I wrote on Wednesday that I was looking for a market move to lower lows, with the caveat that in this market it was impossible to give anything a 100% certainty. But, as I’ve noted in recent reports and video reports, the indexes have at least looked like they’ve wanted to break out to the downside. On a closing basis, that is what we saw on Friday as the indexes sold off around 2%... Read More