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Well… 2020 just can’t end soon enough for me. COVID just keeps coming – and in novel ways. We are now faced with the emergence of a new and particularly contagious strain that appeared in the UK over the past several weeks. The situation is bad enough that the entire country has shut down and travel… Read the full article.
U.S. equity markets continue to digest the sudden large gains seen in November. Major indices are essentially flat since December 1 and SPY has experienced four straight down days after hitting record highs on December 6. This makes for the longest consecutive losing streak in almost three months. However, all is not bad. Churning for… Read the full article.
U.S. equity markets continue to make (or hold near) all-time highs. Despite COVID-19 again running out of control throughout the country, investors look ahead to several proven vaccines in the process of being approved and distributed. It appears that will happen within a matter of weeks, if not days. We also anticipate some type of… Read the full article.
We just closed out an epic monthly rally in the broad U.S. equity indices. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq were all up more than 10% for the month despite yesterday’s pullback. On November 15, stocks broke out of a two-month extremely volatile trading range. The previous high reached in early September by the S&P… Read the full article.
The past week has seen continued rotation into cyclical assets like industrials, materials, consumer discretionary, financials, and even beaten down energy. We have been watching for this since August when we first pointed out the divergence between big tech and everything else. We pointed out then that we would eventually need to see other sectors… Read the full article.
For a change this week, I’d like to provide some insight into what it means (good and bad) to have a rules-based process. There is a chart of the S&P 500 over the past three years for reference on Page 2 of this commentary. My idea for this week’s commentary comes as a result of… Read the full article.
Each week when I sit down to write our weekly commentary, I seem to exceed my previous week’s amazement at the world around us. We elected a new president (sort of). A Biden victory was expected to be bad for equity markets according to the majority of experts. So, what happened as soon as it… Read the full article.
On October 12, the broad U.S. equity market (SPY) came within a whisker of its all-time high reached less than six weeks earlier. The positive stock performance was based on hopes for improving corporate earnings going forward, an additional stimulus package, and Covid-19 having taken a backseat in our country’s collective conscious. Since then, we have… Read the full article.
Volatility continues and all major U.S. indices have dropped back to their respective 50-day moving averages. This follows a week of steady selling. The S&P 500 has dropped nearly 4% in that time. Third quarter earnings season is in full swing. As we have pointed out, companies across the board are doing better than was… Read the full article.
We have been watching the S&P 500 as it battles to reclaim its 50-day moving average. Last week ended with the index settling just below it. Weekly closes are more important than daily closes when it comes to technical analysis. The late selling on Friday was likely the result of President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis coming to… Read the full article.
U.S. equity indexes continue to experience heightened volatility. This has been the case for much of September and should come as no surprise given the season and all that investors have on their plate. We have been watching the S&P 500 closely as a proxy for the broad equity market. Seven trading days ago it… Read the full article.
Equity markets resumed selling after the Federal Reserve meeting last Wednesday. The 50-day moving average on the S&P 500 was promptly broken, and closed well beneath that important technical average on Friday. It appears that investors are finally concluding that the only way out of the economic hole we are in will be a tough… Read the full article.
Markets continue to be volatile this week as investors try to determine whether we have come too far too fast off the March lows. The good news is that the 50-day moving average (SPY) has survived three tests in the past five trading days. For those market technicians out there, it is also notable that… Read the full article.
Equity markets hit a wall on Thursday and selling began in earnest for the first time since March. In my opinion, the straight up move in equity indexes since the March 23 low was not supported by the country’s basic economics. I have previously discussed the lack of participation by many important sectors, as well… Read the full article.
The S&P 500 has officially closed out weekly trading at new all-time highs. It is now up nearly 8% for the year. We have watched this “broad” index battle to pass February highs over the past several weeks. It follows the tech-focused Nasdaq, which did so earlier in the summer and has continued to plow higher… Read the full article.
This past week the S&P 500 battled resistance at its previous all-time highs (just below 3400). We had two consecutive record closes, only to fall back after the Wednesday release of minutes from the previous Federal Reserve meeting. Those minutes revealed just how much uncertainty exists within the minds of our central bankers. The gist is… Read the full article.
Equity markets continue to push higher in the face of ongoing uncertainty. We discussed last week that the next probable stop for the S&P 500 (SPY) is the February high of 3400. We continue to move in that direction. All eyes are currently on Congress as coronavirus relief package negotiations resume this week. It is… Read the full article.
My apologies to everyone for the late commentary this week. I spent the last five days on a golf and BBQ tour across the beautiful state of Arkansas in an RV with my son Jack. Truth be told, we only made it two nights in the RV before we had enough of the “roughing it”… Read the full article.
The benchmark S&P 500 index has officially broken out above 3200 and, in doing so, broken out of its two-month trading range. We have been watching this unfold for several weeks now. It appeared that the likelihood of a move to higher prices was greater than a pullback after equity markets survived several serious attempts… Read the full article.
Equity markets moved to the high end of their trading range over the past week. For those keeping track, the S&P 500 has been rangebound between 3000 and 3200 for the better part of two months. During this time, there were two occasions that sharp and rapid selling threatened to cause a break below 3000… Read the full article.
