ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
The United States Oil Fund, LP (USO) has declined six straight Mondays and seven of the last eight. Prior to this streak, USO only declined 39% of Mondays in 2022 (where the market was trading on the prior Friday). Overall, the split is essentially 50/50 with 19 Monday blues versus 20 Monday gains. In other … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Now I see why there was so little fanfare about the end of the bear market. Last week’s trading looks like a warm-up for a bear market comeback. The S&P 500 and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) printed bearish confirmations of resistance at their respective 200-day moving averages (DMAs) (the blue … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market threw a big fakeout, the biggest I have seen in a long time. Just yesterday, a synchronized failure at key resistance levels from the major indices combined with a drop from overbought conditions to convince me to get (cautiously) bearish on the stock market. The read on July CPI … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market took one more day to get resolution on the technical signals flashing from market breadth. A drop from overbought conditions triggered a bearish market signal. Failures at important resistance from the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and IWM each reinforced the bearish signal. However, the relatively mild trading action and … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: Get used to it. The economy continues to unfold in unexpected ways. An exceptionally strong July jobs report threw some cold water on the breathless expectations on Wall Street for a recession. As one journalist commented on Marketplace, today’s economic context is a strange one with so many talking about a recession … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The major indices enjoyed important rebounds last week. Despite this summer of discontent, buyers managed to follow through on the previous week’s test of the oversold threshold. The gains are yet another testament to the opportunities in oversold trading conditions. The rebound was strong enough to push market breadth to new heights … Read more
Stock Market Commentary: The stock market is delivering fertile ground for bear market green shoots. Market breadth in the form of AT50 (MMFI), the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 50-day moving averages (DMAs), closed at a one month high. Under the hood are individual stocks achieving convincing 50DMA breakouts and closing out primary … Read more
After presenting my conditions for bottoming across the collection of ARK funds, the funds suffered a serious setback in the bottoming process. Some funds hit new lows and others cracked critical support levels. The stock market’s rebound from oversold conditions helped turn the tide and sentiment on the ARK funds. Interestingly, performance relative to key … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Over two years ago, a lethal virus forced the economy to shut down. The Federal Reserve was one of many to rush to the rescue with historic sums of liquidity. Today, the economy stubbornly runs hot, and the Fed is rushing to “shut down” financial markets to cool down economic activity “just … Read more
Almost seven years ago, I developed the “200DMA Signal” to provide a relative measure of major bottoms for the S&P 500 (SPY). The 200-day moving average (DMA) is a long-term measure of a price trend, so it provides a robust assessment of prevailing trends. The 200DMA Signal triggers when the S&P 500’s 200DMA suffers its … Read more