Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Richmond Fed … Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
“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.”
 
RICHMOND FED MANUFACTURING (Advisor Perspectives)
“Fifth district manufacturing activity was flat in March according to the most recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index rose ten points to 0, marking the first nonnegative reading in over a year.” Analysis and charts at…
 
QUICK MARKET SUMMARY
-Tuesday the S&P 500 declined about 0.4% to 6556.
-VIX rose about 3% to 26.95.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.368% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025 & 2/6/2026
“Despite all the bearish noise, Goldman Sachs isn’t backing down on Nvidia (NVDA) stock yet. After another stellar GTC showing, the bank reiterated its $250 price target and maintained a buy rating, underscoring confidence in the AI giant’s tremendous upside from current levels.” Story at…  
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 19 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.)
 
TODAY’S COMMENT
S&P 500 drop from the Top: 6.1%
S&P 500 % above 200-dMA: -1.1%
Trading Days since top: 49. (Avg top to bottom for corrections less than 10% = 32 days, but the 10% correction in Sept of 2023 lasted 64-days top to bottom.)
 
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators declined from -10 to -12 (12 more Bear indicators than Bull indicators), a BEARISH indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread (purple on the chart above) that smooths daily fluctuations continued higher – a BULLISH indication. The continued improvement of the 10-dMA is a good sign.
 
Repeating: Regarding negotiations with Iran…who knows? Theis war s the key for the markets. Is Trump going to settle or continue the fight. It’s an unknown that I can’t predict, so why guess. We’ll watch and see if there is a confirmed, technical, buy-signal this week. None yet.
 
BOTTOM LINE
No change here: Until proven otherwise, I am bearish on the markets in the short-term; but I remain fully invested at 55% in stocks. The remainder of my portfolio is about 25% bonds and 20% cash. 
 
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…
 
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…
 
TUESDAY 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 invested position is about 55% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (80% 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 although I don’t trade as much as I used to. 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.
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Monday, March 23, 2026

… Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
“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.”
 
IRAN BELIEVES IT IS WINNING THE WAR (WSJ)
“This hubris is dangerous because they are not smart enough to understand that President Trump will never let them win. They don’t understand how far he’s willing to go,” said Jason Greenblatt, who served as the White House special envoy for the Middle East in the first Trump administration…
…Demands voiced by Iranian leaders in recent days as conditions for ending the war include massive reparations from the U.S. and its allies and the expulsion of American military forces from the region. They have also called for transforming the Strait of Hormuz—an international waterway where free navigation is guaranteed under international law—into an Iranian toll booth controlling one-third of the world’s shipborne crude oil…
…Round-the-clock intelligence and surveillance flights that are now available because of U.S. air superiority, combined with rapid targeting of Iranian weapons systems, could make all the difference, said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
“It’s not something that is going to happen overnight, but over time the Strait of Hormuz will be open back to the levels of shipping that we saw before this conflict broke out. It is a reasonable estimate that it will be a matter of weeks,” he said. “The Iranians are not going to end up with control over the strait, we are.” Story at…
 
DANGEROUS [STOCK MARKET] MISCALCULATION – CITADEL SECURITIES (Markets Insider)
"Investors have been accustomed to fading geopolitical shocks in recent years and have been relatively sanguine about the impact of this current war…predicated on the assumption that President Trump can end the war at any time and walk away. In my view, this is a miscalculation," he [Nohshad Shah, head of EMEA fixed income sales at Citadel Securities] wrote. Shah compared the current Iran conflict to last year's wide-ranging tariffs, adding that the war is different than other events that have spooked markets because it involves buy-in from multiple parties. Trump had the choice to remove the tariffs he imposed on many US trade partners at any time. But in the case of the Iran war, multiple other nations would have to agree.
Local Iranian media reported that Trump did not have any conversations with their country's leaders, contrary to his statements on Truth Social. This serves as a reminder of Shah's point, that Trump cannot simply walk away from the conflict and expect its global economic impact to cease.” Story at…
My cmt: Posted before Trump claimed negotiations to end the conflict were underway.
 
NATIONAL ACTIVITY INDEX (Advisor Perspectives )
“The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) fell to -0.11 in February from +0.20 in January. Two of the four broad categories of indicators used to construct the index decreased from January, and three categories made negative contributions.”
Analysis and charts at…
 
QUICK MARKET SUMMARY
-Monday the S&P 500 rose about 1.2% to 6581.
-VIX declined about 2% to 26.15. (Seems like the options players aren’t convinced the correction is over.)  
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury declined to 4.34% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025 & 2/6/2026
“Despite all the bearish noise, Goldman Sachs isn’t backing down on Nvidia (NVDA) stock yet.  After another stellar GTC showing, the bank reiterated its $250 price target and maintained a buy rating, underscoring confidence in the AI giant’s tremendous upside from current levels.” Story at…  
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 17 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.)
 
TODAY’S COMMENT
S&P 500 drop from the Top: 5.7%
S&P 500 % above 200-dMA: -0.7%
Trading Days since top: 48. (Avg top to bottom for corrections less than 10% = 32 days, but the 10% correction in Sept of 2023 lasted 64-days top to bottom.)
 
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators improved from -12 to -10 (10 more Bear indicators than Bull indicators), a BEARISH indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread (purple on the chart above) that smooths daily fluctuations continued higher – a BULLISH indication. The continued improvement of the 10-dMA is a good sign.
 
On Friday, I reposted this old note from Jeffrey Saut concerning a previous decline:
“…last week I began suggesting that we could be in one of these “selling stampedes” that tend to last 17 – 25 sessions, with only 1.5- to three-day pauses/throwback rallies, before they exhaust themselves on the downside…I also said that it was too soon to tell yet if this is such a stampede, but “Never on a Friday.” The reference was that once the markets get into one of these weekly downside skeins, they rarely bottom on a Friday. Nope, they typically give participants over the weekend to brood about their losses and then they show up the next Monday in “sell mode” leading to Turning Tuesday.”
 
Turning Tuesday? I think we had Trump Monday. Regarding negotiations with Iran…who knows? That’s the key for the markets. Is Trump going to settle or continue the fight? It’s an unknown that I can’t predict, so why guess. We’ll watch and see if there is a confirmed, technical, buy-signal this week.
 
BOTTOM LINE
No change here: Until proven otherwise, I am bearish on the markets in the short-term; but I remain fully invested at 55% in stocks. The remainder of my portfolio is about 25% bonds and 20% cash. 
 
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…
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…
MONDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)
My basket of Market Internals improved to HOLD. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it diverges from the Index.) 
  

 

My invested position is about 55% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (80% 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 although I don’t trade as much as I used to. 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.
 

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Friday, March 20, 2026

… Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
“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.”
 
LAW KEPT ODU FROM KNOWING JALLOH WAS A TERRORIST (WTKR-News 3)
“Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was able to re-enroll at Old Dominion University after serving federal prison time for supporting ISIS because Virginia law prohibits public universities from asking applicants about their criminal history. Jalloh, 36, shot and killed ROTC instructor Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah and wounded two others in a classroom at ODU on March 12, 2026. He was a current student at the time of the attack…” Story at…
My cmt: Gotta love those Democrats. They wrote the bill.
 
HOW LOW WILL IT GO (invezz - Thursday)
“While the 200-day MA is a key psychological marker, Krinsky [BTIG’s chief market technician] sees 6,520 as the “more important” level for investors to watch. That level represents both the November and Q4 low (2025). If the index fails to hold this support, it will signal a profound shift in market dynamics, he told CNBC.” Story at…
 
QUICK MARKET SUMMARY
-Friday the S&P 500 fell about 1.5% to 6506.
-VIX rose about 11% to 26.78.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.384% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025 & 2/6/2026
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 20 gave Bear-signs and 8 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
S&P 500 drop from the Top: 6.8%
S&P 500 % above 200-dMA: -1.7%
Trading Days since top: 47. (Avg top to bottom for corrections less than 10% = 32 days, but the 10% correction in Sept of 2023 lasted 64-days top to bottom.)
 
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators remained -12 (12 more Bear indicators than Bull indicators), a BEARISH indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread (purple on the chart above) that smooths daily fluctuations continued higher – a BULLISH indication. (There was a bounce higher about 10-days ago and that may be sending the 10-dMA higher – perhaps a false signal.)
 
Options trading stopped today with expiration tomorrow.  That pushed volumes much higher than normal. The level of volume Friday usually indicates a higher level of fear suggesting selling will continue. On the other hand, the volume was so high that it may indicate capitulation. I say “may” because the options expiration may have skewed the data. Still, there were several Bottom Signals Friday:
 
BOTTOM SIGNALS
-The Panic indicator flashed a warning.  This indicator can be either Bearish or Bullish depending on whether markets are at a top or bottom. Now, it’s a Bullish sign.
-Only 7 of the last 20-days have been up. That level of negativism is bullish.
-Both Bollinger Bands and RSI are oversold.
-My Smart Money indicator is oversold.
-Only 15% of issues on the NYSE advanced Friday.  That is a number that usually occurs around bottoms, although it can be early.
 
This is probably not be a bottom, but it does suggest a bounce next week. Alternatively, the markets could make a bottom next week.
 
Here’s an old note from Jeffrey Saut concerning a previous decline:
“…last week I began suggesting that we could be in one of these “selling stampedes” that tend to last 17 – 25 sessions, with only 1.5- to three-day pauses/throwback rallies, before they exhaust themselves on the downside…I also said that it was too soon to tell yet if this is such a stampede, but “Never on a Friday.” The reference was that once the markets get into one of these weekly downside skeins, they rarely bottom on a Friday. Nope, they typically give participants over the weekend to brood about their losses and then they show up the next Monday in “sell mode” leading to Turning Tuesday.”
 
So far, this selling episode had lasted 17 sessions. Turning Tuesday? We’ll see.
 
BOTTOM LINE
No change here: I am bearish on the markets in the short-term; but I remain fully invested at 55% in stocks. The remainder of my portfolio is about 25% bonds and 20% cash. 
 
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…
 
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…
 
FRIDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)
My basket of Market Internals declined to SELL. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it diverges from the Index.) 
 
 
 
My invested position is about 55% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (80% 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 although I don’t trade as much as I used to. 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.
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Thursday, March 19, 2026

Jobless Claims … Philly Fed … New Home Sales … Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
“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.”
 
Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist at Carson Group
My cmt: The FED is more worried about inflation than jobs.
"…higher energy prices will push up overall inflation." – Fed Chair, Jerome Powell.
 
PHILLY FED (RTT NEWS)
“Manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia region continued to expand in the month of March, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia on Thursday. The Philly Fed said its diffusion index for current general activity rose to 18.1 in March from 16.3 in February, with a positive reading indicating growth.” Story at…
 
JOBLESS CLAIMS (AP News)
“The number of Americans filing for jobless aid for the week ending March 14 fell by 8,000 from the previous week to 205,000…” Story at…
 
NEW HOME SALES (CNBC)
Sales of newly built homes in January dropped 17.6% month over month…Sales were also 11.3% lower than in January 2025…” Story at…
 
QUICK MARKET SUMMARY
-Thursday the S&P 500 fell about 0.3% to 6606.
-VIX declined about 4% to 24.06.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury declined to 4.251% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025 & 2/6/2026
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 18 gave Bear-signs and 6 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
S&P 500 drop from the Top: 5.3%
S&P 500 % above 200-dMA: -0.2%
Trading Days since top: 46. (Avg top to bottom for corrections less than 10% = 32 days, but the 10% correction in Sept of 2023 lasted 64-days top to bottom.)
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators improved from -14 to -12 (12 more Bear indicators than Bull indicators), a BEARISH indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread (purple on the chart above) that smooths daily fluctuations turned up – a BULLISH indication.
 
The S&P 500 closed below its 200-dMA.  We had hoped that would be avoided since it is an important level of support.  Now, we want to see if the Index will remain below the 200-day for two consecutive days before we get too concerned. Sometimes traders will buy after weak hands get washed out by a drop below support. I’ll wait until Friday to see what happens in the markets.
 
RSI remains oversold and Bollinger Bands are within a whisker of oversold.  I use these indicators together and they are very close to issuing a buy-signal. As always, I don’t use any indicator or pair of indicators in isolation. 
 
The S&P 500 made a lower low Thursday, but volumes increased suggesting more selling - so no bottom yet. The news in the middle east is unsettled; I suspect there won’t be a low until the news improves. That said, investors will front-run the news. Bottoms frequently occur when conditions seem the worst.
 
We should continue to watch market action around the 200-day
 
BOTTOM LINE
No change here: I am bearish on the markets in the short-term; but I remain fully invested at 55% in stocks. The remainder of my portfolio is about 25% bonds and 20% cash. 
 
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…
 
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…
 
THURSDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)
My basket of Market Internals remained NEUTRAL. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it diverges from the Index.) 
 
 
 
My invested position is about 55% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (80% 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 although I don’t trade as much as I used to. 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.
 
Posted by at

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

FED Decision … PPI … Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
“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.”
 
NEWSOM’S CLIMATE FALSE ALARMS (WSJ)
“Gavin Newsom is raising alarms on climate change again—and getting basic facts wrong. The California governor vows to sue the federal government over the Trump administration’s repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” the main legal basis under the Clean Air Act for mandating reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions. Mr. Newsom claims the reversal will trigger “more deadly wildfires” and “more extreme heat deaths.”
 
Age-adjusted heat-related death risk in California has risen modestly in recent decades—enough to account for 90 additional annual deaths likely linked to higher temperatures. But he omits the other side: Warming has helped reduce age-adjusted cold-related deaths by more than 5,000 a year…
 
…Despite Mr. Newsom’s pronouncements, global warming isn’t the main driver of fires in North America. Poor planning puts more houses in extreme fire-risk zones. California’s surge in wildfires stems overwhelmingly from poor forest management: decades of fire suppression that built up fuels, with almost no prescribed burns…
 
Global fires are dramatically declining in extent, emissions, pollution death risk and intensity. Mr. Newsom’s rhetoric may energize his supporters, but Americans deserve evidence-based policies, not cherry-picked alarm.” - Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus, Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Commentary at…
My cmt: Bjorn Lomberg isn’t a global warming denier. The earth is 1-degree centigrade warmer than it was 100 years ago. The problem is that the effects caused by the warming aren’t what many claim. Further, the fixes won’t fix anything. The article points out that even with huge reductions in CO2 emissions by the US and other developed nations, the earth’s future temperature would be reduced by less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
FED DECISION (CNBC)
“The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it is holding rates steady for the second time this year and projected one rate cut this year…’The implications of events in the Middle East for the US economy are uncertain,’ Powell said. ‘In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation, but it is too soon to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy.’” Story at…
 
PPI (CNBC)
“The producer price index, a measure of pipeline costs that producers receive for their products, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.7% on the month…Excluding volatile food and energy costs, the so-called core PPI increased 0.5%...On a 12-month basis, headline PPI inflation was at 3.4%, the most since February 2025, while core was at 3.9%” Story at…
My cmt: Prices rose much higher than expected. 3.4%? Wow.
 
QUICK MARKET SUMMARY
-Wednesday the S&P 500 fell about 1.4% to 6625.
-VIX rose about 12% to 25.09.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.265% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025 & 2/6/2026
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 19 gave Bear-signs and 5 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
S&P 500 drop from the Top: 5.1%
S&P 500 % above 200-dMA: 0.1%
Trading Days since top: 45. (Avg top to bottom for corrections less than 10% = 32 days, but the 10% correction in Sept of 2023 lasted 64-days top to bottom.)
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators declined from -9 to -14 (14 more Bear indicators than Bull indicators), a BEARISH indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread (purple on the chart above) that smooths daily fluctuations flattened out – a NEUTRAL indication.
 
Once again, investors were disappointed by the Fed’s failure to cut rates and the follow-on commentary.  That’s apparent from the chart; the S&P 500 collapsed after 2pm and didn’t recover as Fed Chair Powell gave his commentary.
 
“If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious s**t.”  Where’s Doc Brown when you need him? Looks like it’s back to the future all over again. The Index has fallen to its 200-dMA. We don’t want to see the 200-day fail.
 
There were some technical bottom signs, but not enough t call a bottom here. RSI is oversold. Bollinger Bands are within a whisker of oversold.  I use these indicators together and they are very close to issuing a buy signal. As always, I don’t use any indicator or pair of indicators in isolation.  The better sign is the 50-indicator Bull/Bear Spread, but Indicators can be slow to turn. The best way to call a bottom is to see a lower-low on lower-volume with improved internals.
 
We should watch market action around the 200-day. It is an important support level and I may want to raise some more cash if the 200-dMA doesn’t hold. I tend to be more conservative now as a retiree, and “return-of-investment” is more important the “return-on-investment.”
 
BOTTOM LINE
No change here: I am bearish on the markets in the short-term; but I remain fully invested at 55% in stocks. The remainder of my portfolio is about 25% bonds and 20% cash. 
 
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…
 
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…
 
WEDNESDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)
My basket of Market Internals remained NEUTRAL. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it diverges from the Index.) 
 
 
 
My invested position is about 55% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (80% 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 although I don’t trade as much as I used to. 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.
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