Federal Reserve Minutes ... Jobless Claims ... Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis ...
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) will be closed
on Thursday, Jan. 9, for the National Day of Mourning for
the39th U.S. President James (Jimmy) Carter. Any transaction requested on a
holiday, weekend, or after the NYSE closes will be processed on the next
business day.
“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.
“Nearly 50 years after the snail darter temporarily
blocked the construction of a dam in Tennessee, researchers at Yale University
found that the endangered species technically is not a species at all. The
researchers announced Friday that genetic analysis found the fish to be neither
a distinct species nor a subspecies, but rather an eastern population of the
stargazing darter, which is not and never was considered endangered... Ezra
Klein, the liberal New York Times columnist [said], "I am
much more skeptical—not of regulation but of a lot of existing
regulations," he recently said on his influential podcast.”... As for the
snail darter, the conservation efforts worked. The minnow was downgraded from
"endangered" to "threatened" in 1984 and eventually
delisted entirely in 2022 — two years before the Yale researchers discovered it
was never a species to begin with [and 43-years after the dam was built]. Story
at...
The
Endangered Fish That Halted a Major Dam Was Never Endangered After All
My cmt: When I worked in Government, the National Marine
Fisheries (a federal agency) reclassified the Loggerhead turtle in the Chesapeake
Bay as a different population. I always
suspected it was so they could continue to classify the turtle as Threatened –
but who knows? I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist.
FEDERAL RESERVE MINUTES (CNBC)
“Federal Reserve officials at their December
meeting expressed concern about inflation and the impact that
President-elect Donald Trump’s
policies could have, indicating that they would be moving more slowly on
interest rate cuts because of the uncertainty, minutes released Wednesday
showed... ‘Almost all participants judged that upside risks to the inflation
outlook had increased,’ the minutes said. ‘As reasons for this judgment,
participants cited recent stronger-than-expected readings on inflation and the
likely effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy.’“
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/08/fed-minutes-january-2025.html
JOBLESS CLAIMS (Investing.com)
“Initial
claims for state jobless aid slipped to 201,000 during the week
ended on January 4, down from a prior mark of 211,000, according to a report
from the Labor Department on Wednesday. Economists had expected a reading of
214,000.” Story at...
https://www.investing.com/news/economic-indicators/weekly-us-jobless-claims-unexpectedly-dip-to-201000-3803018
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS AS OF 1PM FRIDAY
-Wednesday the S&P 500 rose about 0.2% to 5918.
-VIX fell about 0.7% to 17.70.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose (compared to
about this time, prior trading day) to 4.693%.
MY TRADING POSITIONS:
XLK – Holding since the October 2022 lows. Added more 9/20.
SSO – added 12/20. (IRA acct.)
SPY – added 12/20. (IRA acct.)
QLD – added 12/20. (IRA acct.)
NVDA – added 1/6/2025
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
Today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 14 gave Bear-signs
and 7 were Bullish. The rest are neutral. (It is normal to have a lot of
neutral indicators since many of the indicators are top or bottom indicators
that will signal only at extremes.)
The daily Bull/Bear, 50-Indicator spread (Bull Indicators
minus Bear Indicators, red curve in the chart above) improved to -7 (7 more Bear
indicators than Bull indicators).
TODAY’S COMMENT
The bull-bear spread of -7 is Bearish, but the
improvement from -10 to zero Friday was very bullish.
The10-dMA of the 50-day indicator spread is still rising
so that’s bullish; that’s the more important sign at this point. There are
worrisome signs.
Wednesday, the S&P 500 remained below its 50-dMA so
markets are not out of the woods yet. In addition, Breadth has been falling
along with the recent weakness. Over the last 2 and ½ months, more than half of
the issues on the NYSE have declined. That
has been true since mid-December and it is a “bear now” warning, although the “bear
now” warning is more of a warning than an indicator.
The good news? The S&P 500 made a low on 19 December. That low was successfully tested 2 January so it appears that the
bottom is in. Indicators confirmed the
bottom on 3 January. All we need now is for the price action to validate those
observations.
BOTTOM LINE
I am cautiously 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.
*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 remained HOLD. (My basket of Market
Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it
diverges from the Index.)
...My current invested
position is about 75% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50%
invested in stocks is a normal position. (75% is my max stock allocation when I
am confident that markets will continue higher; 30% in stocks is my Bear market
position.)
I trade about 15-20% of the total portfolio using the
momentum-based analysis I provide here. When I see bullish signs, 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.
