Stock Market Battle Royale: Regime Change Or A Big, Bad Bubble? – Above the 40 (January 26, 2021)

Stock Market Commentary After the stock market ended its last overbought period, I hesitated to drop my short-term trading call back to bearish. Three days later and the market has yet to snap back into overbought trading conditions. As the major indices levitate, my favorite breadth indicator, AT40 (T2108), the percentage of stocks trading above … Read more

Stocks Hold A Tenuous Grip On Overbought Trading Conditions – Above the 40 (January 15, 2021)

Stock Market Commentary A liquidity-driven bounce off support took a small breather last week. The major stock market indices ended the week with a small loss. On the way there, overbought trading conditions ended for a day. As the major indices languished, the stock market dipped in and out of overbought conditions on an intraday … Read more

Overbought Trading Resumes With Fresh Momentum for the Reopen Trade – Above the 40 (November 13, 2020)

Stock Market Statistics AT40 = 74.4% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (Day #1 overbought, 3 of last 4 days ooverbought) AT200 = 68.1%% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs (near 3-year high and holding breakout above post financial crisis downtrend) VIX = 23.1 Short-term Trading Call: neutral … Read more

A Bullish Divergence for Stocks Even As President Falls to the Coronavirus – Above the 40 (October 2, 2020)

Stock Market Statistics AT40 = 41.8% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (ranged from 25.8% to 42.8%) AT200 = 42.6% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs (ranged from 39.2% to 45.5%) VIX = 27.6 Short-term Trading Call: cautiously bullish Stock Market Commentary Last Friday was the kind of … Read more

A $2.3 Trillion End to An Extreme Oversold Period in the Stock Market – Above the 40 (April 10, 2020)

AT40 = 24.4% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (ended 31-day oversold period)AT200 = 10.9% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAsVIX = 41.7Short-term Trading Call: cautiously bullish Stock Market Commentary “The Federal Reserve on Thursday took additional actions to provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to support … Read more

A Hard Lesson in Indexing: zulily Versus Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF

I have already written a mea culpa on zulily, Inc. (ZU). However, I feel that my trade on this stock was so bad, it deserves a SECOND one… especially since as I write, the stock is down about 8% in what looks like continuation selling from November’s post-earnings breakdown and gap down. The stock is … Read more

Sifting Through the Rubble of Retail High-Flyers for Potential Trades – Long and Short

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 6, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) The HOLDRS Retail ETF (RTH) made new all-time highs in late July, and the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) has remained in a trading range since failing a retest of its … Read more

Betting On Best Buy’s Post-Earnings Potential

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on March 26, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) According to ETF Channel, Best Buy (BBY) is the second largest holding of the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT). Yet, BBY is greatly underperforming this retail ETF. While XRT is at … Read more

Retail ETF (XRT) Sprints Toward All-Time Highs…And A New Bull Market?!

I was very skeptical of Bernie Schaeffer’s choice of XRT, the SPDR S&P Retail ETF, as one of his top three recommendations in late November. He chose XRT as a contrarian play in the face of heavy skepticism about the health of the consumer. XRT slogged and churned for over two months before breaking out … Read more

The Consumer Remains Bullish on Spending, Not On Mutual Funds

Major resistance has broken and trends are turning back up on the major indices, so it is time to consider more seriously the prospect of the market printing fresh highs on the year sooner than later. Yesterday, I examined Cummins (CMI) as one of several stocks that may indicate the market has sufficient buying power … Read more