Factory Orders ... Durable Goods ... FED Beige Book ... Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis ...

 
“What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. Insofar as they fail, they receive the money; insofar as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.” ― Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
 
“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.
 
"This is maybe the most dangerous market of my career, and that includes 1987's crash, that includes the savings and loan debacle market of the early '90s, that includes the 1999 to 2009 lost decade in the S&P 500 in the dot-com bubble. This is the most difficult market of my 45 years." -  Bill Smead, Smead Value Fund (SMVLX), May 2025.
 
TRUMP LOSES ON TARIFFS
“President Donald Trump's sweeping tariff authority suffered another devastating blow, with the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against his use of emergency powers to impose universal tariffs. The decision all but guarantees Supreme Court review—and when the inevitable final adverse ruling comes down from the high court, likely in summer 2026, American taxpayers could face the largest unplanned government expenditure in modern history: a massive refund bill that could easily exceed $500 billion, plus interest, at precisely the moment when Treasury markets are already showing dangerous signs of stress." Story at...
Trump's Tariff Gamble Could Trigger a $500B Treasury Crisis | Opinion
 
JOLTS REPORT (AP News)
“The Labor Department reported Wednesday that job openings fell from 7.4 million in June and came in modestly below what economists had forecast. Healthcare and social assistance companies cut openings by 181,000 and retailers by 110,000. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed that layoffs rose slightly.” Story at...
https://apnews.com/article/job-openings-unemployment-economy-trump-tariff-f3dbebb204378f8119ad277b1916a7fc
 
FACTORY ORDERS / DURABLE GOODS (Yahoo Finance)
“Factory orders decreased 1.3% after an unrevised 4.8% drop in June, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said on Wednesday...Orders advanced 3.5% on a year-on-year basis in July...
... The government also reported that orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, which are seen as a measure of business spending plans on equipment, jumped 1.1% in July...” Story at...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/weak-commercial-aircraft-bookings-weigh-144205863.html
 
FED BEIGE BOOK (Bloomberg)
“Most of the twelve Federal Reserve districts reported little or no change in economic activity since the prior Beige Book period,” according to the report published Wednesday. “Across districts, contacts reported flat to declining consumer spending because, for many households, wages were failing to keep up with rising prices.” Story at...
Fed’s Beige Book Shows Little or No Growth Across Most of the US
 
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Wednesday the S&P 500 rose about 0.5% to 6448.
-VIX declined about 5% to 16.35.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury declined to 4.215% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS:
SPY – Added 8/26/2025
XLK – Added 8/26/2025
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
Today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 7 gave Bear-signs and 13 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.)

TODAY’S COMMENT
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators remained +6 (6 more Bull indicators than Bear indicators) and is now giving a slightly Bullish indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread continued down (although at a slower rate of decline) – a bearish sign.
 
Today, there was a Bollinger Squeeze signal that occurs when Bollinger Bands are close together. “A Bollinger Band... is defined by a series of lines that are plotted two standard deviations—both positively and negatively—away from the simple moving average (SMA) of the price of an asset... A Squeeze is triggered when volatility reaches a six-month low and is identified when Bollinger Bands reach a six-month minimum distance apart...” The Bollinger Squeeze predicts a big move (breakout) in the S&P 500, but it doesn’t tell us the direction of such a move. To determine breakout direction, Bollinger suggests looking at other indicators. He suggests using the relative strength index (RSI). Bollinger bands are discussed at Investopedia...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accumulationdistribution.asp
RSI is near the middle of its range so it will not tell us what direction a breakout may be. In addition, Bollinger mentions a few other indicators I don’t use.  Looking at some of my indicators, we see the following: Buying-pressure minus selling-pressure is basically flat. The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators improved to a slightly Bullish +6 (6 more Bull indicators than Bear indicators). The 10-dMA of the spread is slowly falling – a bearish sign.
 
We’re not getting a strong indicator of direction, up or down. The S&P 500 bounced up from its lower trendline Wednesday and it is sitting at the same level as it was 5-weeks ago. We may be tempted to guess the breakout will be to the upside, but given the indicators, I won’t try to trade the move.
 
The biggest concern remains: all of the ETFs that I track for momentum purposes are above their respective 120-dMAs.  That signals a top, but declines following the signal are often small, and the signal can be early.
 
BOTTOM LINE
I remain cautiously bullish to neutral.
 
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 slipped to 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 50% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (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.