Setting Up for Another First of Month Pop…or A Bull Trap?

Buyers are again lifting the stock market from its intra-day lows and providing some potential clues on where to draw the bull/bear lines from a technical perspective. The case for a bullish setup is relatively strong: Three days of high volume selling is washing out sellers. 50-day moving average (DMA) essentially successfully retested, leaving primary … Read more

Overbought Matters for At Least A Day

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

Priced In Gold, the Stock Market Continues to Struggle

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

Buyers Push Overbought Indicator to New 3-Month Highs – But Does It Matter?

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

Dollar Survives Support…but Not for Much Longer

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

Chart Review: TIP, TBT, EWZ

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

AK Steel Drives for More Pricing Power

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

Cautious As the S&P 500 Hits the Upper Resistance Target

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

Do Not Buy Solar Stocks As A Play On Higher Oil Prices

On Wednesday, Wunderlich Securities issued a trading call on solar stocks citing a correlation with oil prices. First Solar (FSLR) was the prime beneficiary of this research. Eric Rosenbaum from TheStreet.com beat me to the punch critiquing this call in “Should Solar Stocks Trade on Rising Oil?“, but I will add my two solar panels … Read more