“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool,
Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
“The big money is not in the buying and selling. But in
the waiting.” - Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway
“This country was founded by the bayonet;
it survives by the ballot. Those who
falsely disparage the honesty of our elections are striking a blow at the
foundations of our nation and should be charged with sedition.” – Meade Stith
“In my decades of investing experience, I have not seen
such mindless and uninformed speculation as I have witnessed recently. Indeed, in nominal
dollar terms...it is far in excess of the dot.com boom.” – Doug Cass.
"I would, in fact, make sure that there is, we
immediate surge to the border, all those people seeking asylum they deserve to
be heard, that's who we are, we are nation that says if you want to flee and
you are fleeing oppression you should come." – Joe Biden, 1st
Demo Presidential Debate.
JOBLESS CLAIMS (YahooFinance)
“U.S. new weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose last
week [770,000 vs. 700,000 expected] even amid a wave of abating social
distancing restrictions and improving weather...Initial jobless claims remain
well above the Great Recession-era high of 665,000 from 2009.” Story at...
PHILADELPHIA FED INDEX (fxStreet)
“The Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported on Thursday that the
headline Manufacturing Activity Index of the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey
improved sharply to 51.8 in March from 23.1.” Story at...
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS (Conference Board vis
prnewswire)
“The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for
the U.S. increased 0.2 percent in February to 110.5 (2016 = 100),
following a 0.5 percent increase in January and a 0.4 percent increase in
December. "The U.S. LEI continued rising in February, suggesting economic growth
should continue well into this year," said Ataman Ozyildirim, Senior
Director of Economic Research at The Conference Board. "Indeed, the
acceleration of the vaccination campaign and a new round of large fiscal
supports are not yet fully reflected in the LEI. With those developments, The
Conference Board now expects the pace of growth to improve even further this
year, with the U.S. economy expanding by 5.5 percent in 2021." Press
release at...
LOOKING AT LONG-TERM BUBBLE CYCLES (Real Investment
Advice)
“Pay attention to the market. The action this year
is very reminiscent of previous market topping processes. Tops are hard to
identify during the process as “change happens slowly.” The
mainstream media, economists, and Wall Street will dismiss pickup in volatility
as only a corrective process. But when the topping process completes, it will
seem as if the change occurred “all at once.” The same media that told
you “not to worry” will now tell you “no one could have seen it
coming.” But such has been the same ending of every bear market in history. Just
make sure you aren’t part of the story when it occurs.” - Lance Roberts. Commentary at...
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/another-way-to-look-at-long-term-bubble-cycles/
CORONAVIRUS (NTSM)
Here’s the latest from the COVID19 Johns Hopkins website
as of 6:00pm Thursday. US total case numbers are on the left axis; daily
numbers are on the right side of the graph with the 10-dMA of daily numbers in
Green.
COVID-19, A BIO WEAPON? (Forbes)
“Overall, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has some “desirable”
properties as a bioweapon, but probably not enough to make it a good choice for
military purposes. Regardless, it has certainly reminded us of our
vulnerabilities as a society to a new pathogen, and how crippling a pandemic
can be, as we continue to watch the entire world grappling with how to contain
it. I have no doubt that our adversaries have been taking notes on how
challenging it has been for the US to respond
effectively.” - Dr. Mark Kortepeter, physician and biodefense expert who
formerly worked at the U.S. Army “hot zone” research lab. Story at...
CHINA COVID-19 STATS
China has a population of about 1.4 Billion. They claim
to have had a total of 90,062 covid-19 cases. They have vaccinated around 65
million, less than 5% of the total population. Their population is 4-times ours,
yet, per-capita, we have had more than 300-times the number of covid-19 cases
as has China.
The US has 30-times more Covid cases than Japan; 10-times
more cases than Malaysia; 50-times more case than South Korea; 250-times more
cases than Thailand; 3700-times more cases than Vietnam. Curious. Conspiracy
alert: Is Covid-19 “designed” to impact Asians less? Stats from...
I thought I was on to something new here, but the fact
that Covid-19 has less effect on Asians hasn’t gone un-noticed in the medical
community. See the following:
Apparent difference in fatalities between Central
Europe and East Asia due to SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19: Four hypotheses for
possible explanation
“Abstract: The comparison of the numbers of cases and
deaths due to SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 shows that people in Central Europe are much
more affected than people in East Asia where the disease originally occurred.
Trying to explain this difference, this communication presents four hypotheses
that propose the following reasons for the observed findings: 1) Differences in
social behaviors and cultures of people in the two regions; 2) Possible
outbreak of virulent viruses in Central Europe due to multiple viral infection,
and the involvement of immuno-virological factors associated with it, 3)
Possibility of corona resistance gene mutation occurring among East Asians as a
result of long-term co-evolution of virus and host, and 4) possible involvement
of hygienic factors.” Full medical paper at...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403102/
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Thursday the S&P 500 fell
about 1.5% to 3915.
-VIX rose about 12% to 21.58.
-The yield on the 10-year
Treasury rose to 1.712%.
Ugly close today...The S&P
500 fell more than 1% after 2PM and closed very near the low for the day, a
worrisome sign. Both the Russell 2000 (RUT/IWM) and the Nasdaq Composite (COMP)
were down more than 2.9% today and that’s a concern.
The S&P 500 remains
relatively stretched above its 200-dMA. I think that will remain stretched.
Investors are focusing on the unprecedented fiscal stimulus and the extreme FED-support
keeping interest rates down.
The daily sum of 20 Indicators
slipped from +4 to +1 (a positive number is bullish; negatives are bearish);
the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths the daily fluctuations improved from +51
to +54 (These numbers sometimes change after I post the blog based on data that
comes in late.) Most of these indicators are short-term and many are trend
following.
The Long Term NTSM indicator
ensemble slipped to HOLD. Price is bullish; Volume, VIX & Sentiment are
neutral.
At this point, this down-day
doesn’t look like the start of a big pullback. XLI-ETF (cyclical industrials)
are still outperforming the Index. XLU-ETF (Utilities) are underperforming the
Index; both are signs investors are not worried. At the all-time high
Wednesday, breadth was pretty good (slightly better than average), so if we
were to see a correction, it would be expected to be on the small side, say less
than 10%.
The down-move was big today; let’s see if the dip buyers
move in tomorrow. I remain bullish.
MOMENTUM ANALYSIS:
TODAY’S RANKING OF 15 ETFs
(Ranked Daily)
The top ranked ETF receives
100%. The rest are then ranked based on their momentum relative to the leading
ETF.
*For additional background on
the ETF ranking system see NTSM Page at…
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
TODAY’S RANKING OF THE DOW 30
STOCKS (Ranked Daily)
Here’s the revised DOW 30 and
its momentum analysis. The top ranked stock receives 100%. The rest are then
ranked based on their momentum relative to the leading stock.
For more details, see NTSM
Page at…
https://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/a-system-for-trading-dow-30-stocks-my_8.html
THURSDAY MARKET INTERNALS
(NYSE DATA)
Market Internals remained NEUTRAL on the market. Market
Internals are a decent trend-following analysis of current market action, but
should not be used alone for short term trading. They are usually right, but
they are often late. They are most
useful when they diverge from the Index.
Using the Short-term indicator
in 2018 in SPY would have made a 5% gain instead of a 6% loss for buy-and-hold.
The methodology was Buy on a POSITIVE indication and Sell on a NEGATIVE
indication and stay out until the next POSITIVE indication. The back-test
included 13-buys and 13-sells, or a trade every 2-weeks on average.
As of 9 March, my stock-allocation
is about 60% invested in stocks. You may wish to have a higher or lower %
invested in stocks depending on your risk tolerance. 50% is a conservative
position that I consider fully invested for most retirees.
As a retiree, 50% in the stock
market is about fully invested for me – it is a cautious and conservative
number. If I feel very confident, I might go to 60%; if a correction is deep
enough, and I can call a bottom, 80% would not be out of the question.
The markets have not
retested the lows on recent corrections and that left me under-invested on the
bounces. I will need to put less reliance on retests in the future.
