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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