Monday, March 9, 2026

Trump Ends War? … 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.”
 
FBI OBTAINS ARIZONA ELECTION RECORDS (CNBC)
(TRUMP STILL CORRUPTING THE DOJ AND THE FBI)
“The Arizona state Senate’s president said a federal grand jury issued a subpoena for records of the Senate’s audit of 2020 election results in Maricopa County, which President Donald Trump lost that year, contributing to his loss of the state to former President Joe Biden.” Story at…
My cmt: Trump’s witch-hunt on the “stolen-election” fantasy is reaching new heights of foolishness. The Arizona Republicans did their own recount in 2021 and actually found a few more votes for Biden. Here’s a news article from 2021…
 
“This past Friday, September 24, [2021] the result of the so-called “audit” of the election results in Maricopa County by the Republican Majority in the Arizona Senate was finally announced…the Arizona Senate’s contractor Cyber Ninjas ultimately reported that President Biden had won the county and found no evidence of fraud.” Story at…
 
 
JOBS AT RISK FROM AI
 
IRAN WAR COULD BRING DOWN ECONOMIES OF THE WORLD (Fortune)
“This will bring down the economies of the world,” Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar’s energy minister and CEO of its state-owned energy company, told the Financial Times on Friday. “If this war continues for a few weeks, GDP growth around the world will be impacted. Everybody’s energy price is going to go higher.” Story at…
My cmt: Maybe not. See below…
 
TRUMP SIGNALS IRAN WAR IS NEAR AN END (CNBC)
“The S&P 500 made a comeback from earlier losses on Monday after President Donald Trump said the war against Iran could be reaching its end.” Story at…
 
-Monday the S&P 500 rose about 0.8% to 6796.
-VIX fell about 14% to 25.50.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury declined to 4.103% (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 4 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 improved from -17 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 continued down – a BEARISH indication.

 

Today there was a bullish outside reversal pattern on the charts.
“A Bullish Outside Reversal is a two-day technical analysis candlestick pattern that signals a potential reversal of a downtrend, indicating that buyers (bulls) have taken control from sellers (bears). It occurs when the current session's price range completely engulfs the previous session's range, often appearing as a Bullish Engulfing pattern” – Investopedia.
 
We didn’t need an indicator to tell us there was a big reversal higher. The swing from low to high was over 2.5%. My indicators obviously don’t foresee news and that’s what drove today’s reversal. In a “normal” correction (not a news-driven event) I usually call bottoms by looking at specific market internal improvement as the S&P 500 tests a prior low. In this instance, we can look for rapid indicator improvement, especially in breadth, but that may not give us a timely buy-signal if it occurs.
 
Given the news, and the reversal, it would appear that it’s time to buy. I’m already fully invested, but I may add a trading position in SSO. Let’s see how tomorrow goes. Futures are down as I write this and that’s not confirming a bottom.
 
BOTTOM LINE
No change here: I am bearish on the markets in the short-term; but there were optimistic words coming from Trump and that could lead to a turn-around and maybe it was today. We do need to keep in mind that the weakness in markets was there long before the recent events in Iran. I’ll be watching indicators to see if they get more optimistic.
 
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 remained 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.
Posted by at