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“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
 
“Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves.” - Peter Lynch, former manager of Fidelity’s Magellan® fund.
 
“Green-energy advocates who insist that wind and solar generating costs have become competitive are ignoring the added cost of paying for duplicate backup capacity and midday solar overgeneration.” - Rich Batey
My cmt: “Overgeneration” refers to the fact that California power companies are buying power from private solar panels that they can’t use and the grid can’t handle.
 
THE HARRIS HOUSING PLAN HAS ALREADY FAILED (WSJ LETTERS)
“Here in the U.K., the Tory government (kicked out of office last month with its worst election results in 200 years) already operated the exact same plan as Ms. Harris. Dubbed the “Help to Buy” scheme, its boosting of demand has pushed up prices and created misery for many people who used the scheme. Essentially given inducements to buy houses that they couldn’t ordinarily afford, the new homeowners have struggled to maintain their properties and many are already having to downsize.
That the Harris campaign is bluntly ignoring clear information that this experiment has failed elsewhere proves that she has no plan, and is throwing out big numbers to generate headlines.” - Robert Frazer, Salford, U.K. From WSJ at...
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/kamala-harris-biden-economics-price-controls-housing-49d61ef1?mod=letterstoeditor_article_pos1
 
KAMALA HARRIS SPENDING PLAN EXPOSES PIXIE-DUST FISCAL POLICY (New York Post)
“Kamala Harris took a few brief minutes on the campaign trail to answer a couple of questions...When asked how she is going to pay for her lavish spending plans, the vice president explained that it would be covered via those indispensable fiscal tools — pixie dust and magical thinking. 
The expansion of the child tax credit, which will cost $1.2 trillion? According to Harris, “the return on that investment, in terms of what that will do and what it will pay for, will be tremendous.”
Tax credits generally, including a $150 billion expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit? “We know that there’s a great return on investment.”
Subsidies for homeownership, costing $200 billion? “When we increase homeownership in America, what that means in terms of increasing the tax base, not to mention your property tax base, and what that does to fund schools. Again, return on investment.” Story at...
Kamala Harris’ $1.7T spending plan exposes her pixie-dust fiscal policy (msn.com)
 
CRUDE INVENTORIES (EIA)
“U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 4.6 million barrels from the previous week. At 426.0 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 5% below the five year average for this time of year.” Report at...
https://ir.eia.gov/wpsr/wpsrsummary.pdf
 
FED MINUTES (CNBC)
“The vast majority” of participants at the July 30-31 meeting “observed that, if the data continued to come in about as expected, it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting...” Story at... 
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/21/fed-minutes-july-2024.html
 
MARKET LOOKS  GOOD; SENTIMENT TO GREEDY (Heritage Capital)
“The bottom line is that momentum has been strong and some thrusts off of the mini-crash low on August 5th have been triggered. While that’s relatively unimportant for the short-term, it does typically insulate the stock market from more serious damage over the coming 6-12 months.” – Paul Schatz, President, Heritage Capital. Commentary at...
https://investfortomorrow.com/blog/finally-a-down-day-sentiment-back-to-greedy/
 
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Wednesday the S&P 500 rose about 0.4% to 5621.
-VIX rose about 3% to 16.28. 
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury declined to 3.801% (compared to this time, prior trading day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS:
XLK – Holding since the October 2022 lows.
XLK – added more 7/26. This reestablishes the position I had before this recent weakness.
UWM – added 7/15.
QLD – added 7/24.
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
The Bull/Bear Spread remained well to the bull side at 3 Bear-signs and 19-Bull. (The rest are neutral. It is normal to have a lot of neutral indicators since many of those are top or bottom indicators that will signal only at extremes.)

The Bull/Bear, 50-Indicator spread (Bull Indicators minus Bear Indicators) declined from +20 to +16 (16 more Bull indicators than Bear indicators). The 10-dMA is rising; the trend in price is clearly up.
 
TODAY’S COMMENT:
Indicators are looking a lot like they were a couple days ago.  The Overbought / Oversold Index remains overbought and there have been 8 up-days in the last 2 weeks so a down-day Thursday would not be a surprise. Overall, we see a lot of bullish indicators, so all is well.
 
LONG-TERM INDICATOR: The Long Term NTSM indicator remained HOLD: VOLUME is bullish; VIX, SENTIMENT & PRICE are neutral. (This indicator is more valuable for Sell-signals and during major Bear Markets.)
 
{The important major BUY in this indicator was on 21 October 2022, 7-days after the bear-market bottom. For my NTSM overall signal, I suggested that a short-term buying opportunity occurred on 27 September 2022 (based on improved market internals on the retest), although without market follow-thru, I was unwilling to call a buy; however, I did close shorts and increased stock holdings. I issued a Buy-Signal on 4 October, 6-days before the final bottom, based on stronger market action that confirmed the market internals signal. The NTSM sell-signal was issued 21 December, 9 sessions before the high of the 2022 bear market, based on the bearish “Summary of 50” indicator.}
 
BOTTOM LINE
I’m bullish. 
 
ETF - MOMENTUM ANALYSIS:
TODAY’S RANKING OF 15 ETFs (Ranked Daily) ETF ranking follows:
 

The top ranked ETF receives 100%. The rest are then ranked based on their momentum relative to the leading ETF. Utilities are leading momentum due to the flight-to-safety trade from the recent pullback.  I think Technology (XLK) is probably a better choice.
 
*For additional background on the ETF ranking system see NTSM Page at…
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
 
DOW STOCKS - TODAY’S MOMENTUM RANKING OF THE DOW 30 STOCKS (Ranked Daily)
 

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
 
WEDNESDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)

My basket of Market Internals slipped to HOLD. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis of current market action, but should not be used alone for short term trading. They are most useful when they diverge from the Index.) 
 
 
 

...My current invested position is about 75% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. I’m usually about 50% invested in stocks when markets are stretched; my current stock position is above the norm. (75% is my max stock allocation when I am strongly bullish.)
 
I trade about 15-20% of the total portfolio using the momentum-based analysis I provide here. When I see a definitive bottom, I add a lot more stocks to the portfolio, usually by using an S&P 500 ETF as I did back in October 2022 and 2023.