ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
For one day at least, sellers converged with stock market technicals to deliver a large one-day drop in the S&P 500. As it turned out, the three-month highs in T2108, the percentage of stocks trading above their 40-day moving averages (DMAs), did matter after all. T2108 plunged along with the stock market for its worst … Read more
Over the past two days, I have crowed about silver, pondered whether gold will catch up, and marveled at the doubling in the S&P 500 from the March, 2009 lows. Yet, I failed to put the stories together into one chart for proper context: the S&P 500 priced in gold. Of course, almost every gold … Read more
T2108, the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs), has finally moved higher. For much of 2011, T2108 has lingered just above or just below the overbought threshold of 70% (see my new T2108 resource page). It is now at 74.6%. The last time T2108 was this high was 3 months … Read more
Silver finally hit fresh highs on Thursday, and I am now forced to pull out “Plan B” on re-establishing a position in the precious metal. I had expected the “cooling off” period to end with a retest of the 200-day moving average (DMA) and an opportunity to scale back into silver at my own, leisurely … Read more
The dollar approached critical support last week and neatly bounced just as I had hoped and expected. However, as I examine the technical prospects for an extended rally, I cannot shake a resurgent sense of bearishness about the dollar. The daily chart shows some pretty tough overhead resistance awaits any further rally in the dollar: … Read more
While the general stock market just keeps crawling steadily upward, individual stocks continue to produce some very interesting, and very tradable charts. For example, over the past several months, I have been able to identify many valuable breakouts as well as some breakdowns. The three charts in this post are not directly related, but I … Read more
Despite my general caution on the stock market at current levels (it just flipped to overbought status on Monday), I continue to look out for bullish moves on individual stocks. This time, I found a fresh breakout candidate in the solar sector. On Monday, SunPower Corporation (SPWRA or SPWRB) finally broke free of a nine-month … Read more
AK Steel (AKS) reported earnings January 25. The news was good enough to send the stock up 7.7% and back above its 200-day moving average (DMA). Since then, AKS has essentially recovered all the damage done by a Goldman Sachs downgrade to sell in early January. *Chart created using TeleChart: AKS delivered a mix of … Read more
I thought I would get extremely bearish once the S&P 500 reached my upside resistance target of 1300-1310. Yet here we are just five weeks into the year, and the deepest angst I can summon is an uncomfortable sense of “caution.” With T2108 – the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages … Read more
After scanning through the latest quarterly release of the “Statement of Monetary Policy” from the Reserve Bank of Australia, I was reminded that currency traders are trying to prepare for eventual rate hikes from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE): “While financial markets continue to expect the US federal funds … Read more