Jobless Claims … Productivity … ISM Non-Manufacturing… 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.
 
“Never, never, never, believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever . . . is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.” - Winston Churchill.
 
“There’s a lot of exuberance out there,” Dimon continued. “But it was in 1972, 1986, 2000, 2007. That doesn’t give me comfort.” – Jamie Dimon
 
JOBLESS CLAIMS (AP News)
“More Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, but layoffs are still rare and jobless claims remain at historically low levels. The Labor Department reported Thursday filings for benefits ticked up to 206,000 last week from a revised 204,000 the week before.” Story at… 
https://apnews.com/article/unemployment-benefits-jobless-claims-layoffs-labor-3413da9e965fa7266cb62ea1d802badb
 
PRODUCTIVITY (Reuters)
“U.S. worker productivity growth picked up in the second quarter, ​the government confirmed on Thursday, ‌helping to keep labor costs in check.” Story at…
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-second-quarter-productivity-growth-unrevised-2026-09-03/
 
ISM NON-MANUFACTURING PMI
“ISM non-manufacturing PMI comes in at 55.4 in August, beating expectations.” Video at…
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/09/03/ism-non-manufacturing-pmi-comes-in-at-55-point-4-in-august-beating-expectations.html
 
QUICK MARKET SUMMARY
-Thursday the S&P 500 rose about 1.1% to 7748.
-VIX declined about 6% to 14.32.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury declined to 4.764% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
QLD – Added 5/28/2026
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025, 2/6/2026 & 8/3/2026
XLK – Added 6/5/2026
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 9 gave Bear-signs and 14 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 -3 to +5 (5 more Bull indicators than Bear indicators), a NEUTRAL 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 reversed higher, a BULLISH sign.
 
Unchanged volume was very high today (Thursday) suggesting confusion among investors. Some think this represents a reversal. Since the S&P 500 chart is close to flat recently it is hard to say which way a reversal would go. Since this signal is often wrong, it is not one of my indicators, but RSI is down, suggesting a reversal is more likely to be higher if a reversal were to occur.

I mentioned yesterday that the market was too calm as measured by standard deviation of daily market moves. I call this the Calm-Before-the Storm indicator. I usually expect to see this sell-indicator warn in a rising market  within roughly 20-days of a top. I was worried about it yesterday, but on reflection, not so much today. That’s because the top was 3-weeks ago.  I scanned the data and only found a few instances when this indicator gave a sell warning when the markets were not rising. Those cases occurred near bottoms, but since there weren’t many instances, it may not be valid to conclude the bottom is in based on this indicator.
  
BOTTOM LINE
I’m neutral, but leaning 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
 
THURSDAY 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 60% 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.