Showing posts with label 200-day moving average. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 200-day moving average. Show all posts

Sunday, November 11, 2018

WEEKEND WRAP: TA (Technical Analysis) Shows Split Indices, Preferences

By most accounts, the week past was very solid. Midterm elections went to a split decision, the Fed Held firm on interest rates and stocks generally responded with gains. Apparently, Wall Street is perfectly satisfied with Donald J. Trump in the White House, Republicans in control of the Senate, and Democrats holding sway in the House of Representatives. The Dow, in particular, was the big winner, posting its second straight week on the upside, leading the majors with a gain of 2.84%, suggesting that big business is still the motif of the Republican party.

On the slightly more moribund side of the ledger, the NASDAQ, thanks largely to a selloff in tech equities, fared the worst, though still registering a gain of two-thirds of a percent.

What is striking to those steeped in charting discipline is the variegated construction of the major indices. In the interest of brevity and clarity, a table serves best to understand where stock indices are currently residing.

The table below shows where each of the major indices stand in relation to their various moving averages.

Index 50-day MA 200-Day MA 40-Week MA
Dow Above Above Above
NASDAQ Below Below Below
S&P 500 Below Above Above
NYSE COMP. Below Below Below
Dow Trans. Below Below Below

Obviously, the Dow is presently the favored index, having cleared all the hurdles which allow it to be pointed for more success. On the other hand, the NASDAQ, NYSE Composite and Dow Transportation Index are all trending negatively, offering signals in broad swathes that all is not as well as the Dow would have us believe.

The S&P hovers in no-man's land, below the 50-day, but above the 200-day. The 500 major stocks represented cumulatively are offering value, though direction is far from assured.

The Dow Transports have been included because of its unique relationship to the Industrials. Transportation issues are largely overlooked by the financial media, though their importance in general markets should not be undersold. If the companies that move goods, services and people are struggling - even in the face of dramatic declines in fuel prices - something is not right.

What should this suggest to the investor?

Perhaps it is nothing more than big money preferring to buy well-known names with solid track records (the 30 Dow stocks) while shunning the lesser-known companies represented in the broader indices. The S&P probably offered the best indication: that, according to current sentiment, stocks are somewhat fairly valued. Continued divergences such as are showing in the table cannot last for long. Either the positive vibe from the Dow will serve to lift other areas and sectors, or the broadly-defined mid and small-cap stocks in the composite indices (and the transports) will pull all boats crashing into the shoals.

One might expect these divergences to be resolved in short order, though markets today are guided so much by programmatic trading and headline-chasing algorithms, it's difficult to pinpoint where the breaks are actually occurring and in just what direction they are going to move.

A related article by Bernie Schaeffer of Schaeffers Research offers some insight into how well the Dow Industrials and Transports perform under various conditions. The article references November, 2016, and readers should know well what happened in the weeks and months following the general presidential election. Stocks soared, with numerous record highs met and broken.

Should this period - after a midterm election - respond similarly? Technical analysis would say yes, though, as the wizards of Wall Street are always keen to remind: past performance in no indication of future results.

Caveat Emptor indeed.

Dow Jones Industrial Average November Scorecard:

Date Close Gain/Loss Cum. G/L
11/1/18 25,380.74 +264.98 +264.98
11/2/18 25,270.83 -109.91 +155.07
11/5/18 25,461.70 +190.87 +345.94
11/6/18 25,635.01 +173.31 +519.25
11/7/18 26,180.30 +545.29 +1064.54
11/8/18 26,191.22 +10.92 +1075.46
11/9/18 25,989.30 -201.92 +873.54

At the Close, Friday, November 9, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 25,989.30, -201.92 (-0.77%)
NASDAQ: 7,406.90, -123.98 (-1.65%)
S&P 500: 2,781.01, -25.82 (-0.92%)
NYSE Composite: 12,537.53, -84.51 (-0.67%)

For the Week:
Dow: +718.47 (+2.84%)
NASDAQ: +49.91 (+0.68%)
S&P 500: +57.95 (+2.13%)
NYSE Composite: +215.73 (+1.75%)

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Dip-Buyers Step In, Send Stocks Soaring; ADP, Non-Farm Payrolls On Tap

Nothing says bear market like wild rallies from out of the blue and Tuesday's late afternoon jacking of stocks was right out of the market maker's textbook with buy the dip the mantra of the day.

At 1:30 pm ET, the Dow Industrials were up a mere 40 points, but bargain hunters stepped up their games, frantically buying up shares at reduced prices. The result was a big rise in all of the indices with the Dow leading the way higher.

Even though stocks avoided falling into official correction, at the end of the day the major indices were still well off their all-time highs, with the Dow nearly 2000 points lower than its close on October 3rd (26,828.39).

The day's action was similar to rallies on the 16th and 25th, when the Dow gained 547.87 and 401.13, respectively, only to meet larger declines in the days ahead.

What should buoy markets for the time being are a pair of employment reports, the first by ADP on Wednesday morning tracking private payrolls, followed by Friday's non-farm payroll data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Both are predicted to show job gains approaching 200,000 for October.

Another potential boost to markets could come from resumption of stock buybacks as the blackout period during earnings reports frees up shares to be repurchased by the companies that normally sell them to the public.

Analysts are calling the buybacks the backbone of the bull market, which begs the question of just how high a price are companies willing to pay for their own stock. While many in the investment community believe stock buybacks are good for companies and investors as they reduce the number of shares available and make earnings per share measurements easier to meet or beat, others point out that spending company money on own stock points up a paucity of creativity at the highest levels of corporate America as well as an unwillingness to expand a company's business.

In other words, if companies aren't interested in expansion of existing business or creation of new business units within the corporate structure, they must feel that their market penetration is fully saturated or that economic conditions are not conducive to growth.

Buybacks, in addition to massive injections of liquidity by the Fed has been the fluid of the nine-plus-year expansion. What is concerning to long-term investors is what happens when the well runs dry.

Dow Jones Industrial Average October Scorecard:

Date Close Gain/Loss Cum. G/L
10/1/18 26,651.21 +192.90 +192.90
10/2/18 26,773.94 +122.73 +315.63
10/3/18 26,828.39 +54.45 +370.08
10/4/18 26,627.48 -200.91 +169.17
10/5/18 26,447.05 -180.43 -11.26
10/8/18 26,486.78 +39.73 +28.47
10/9/18 26,430.57 -56.21 -27.74
10/10/18 25,598.74 -831.83 -859.57
10/11/18 25,052.83 -545.91 -1,405.48
10/12/18 25,339.99 +287.16 -1,118.32
10/15/18 25,250.55 -89.44 -1,207.76
10/16/18 25,798.42 +547.87 -659.89
10/17/18 25,706.68 -91.74 -751.63
10/18/18 25,379.45 -327.23 -1,078.86
10/19/18 25,444.34 +64.89 -1,013.97
10/22/18 25,317.41 -126.93 -1,140.90
10/23/18 25,191.43 -125.98 -1,265.88
10/24/18 24,583.42 -608.01 -1,873.89
10/25/18 24,984.55 +401.13 -1,472.76
10/26/18 24,688.31 -296.24 -1,769.00
10/29/18 24,442.92 -245.39 -2,014.39
10/30/18 24,874.64 +431.72 -1,582.67

At the Close, Tuesday, October 30, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 24,874.64, +431.72 (+1.77%)
NASDAQ: 7,161.65, +111.36 (+1.58%)
S&P 500: 2,682.63, +41.38 (+1.57%)
NYSE Composite: 12,129.94, +187.42 (+1.57%)