“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
“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.
“The number of people filing for U.S. unemployment benefits fell last week, remaining at historic lows as layoffs are rare and most Americans enjoy job security. Jobless claims slipped to 203,000 last week from a revised 207,000 the week before…” Story at…
https://apnews.com/article/unemployment-benefits-jobless-claims-layoffs-labor-5980ffc63486db19d4beb2443eb70c16
“Tenth District manufacturing activity increased steadily, while expectations for future activity remained expansionary. The month-over-month price indexes for finished products and raw materials ticked up, while year-over-year price growth fell slightly.” Story at…
https://www.kansascityfed.org/surveys/manufacturing-survey/tenth-district-manufacturing-activity-increased-further-in-august-2026/
-Thursday the S&P 500 rose about 0.7% to 7731.
-VIX slipped about 5% to 14.51.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.676% (compared to about this time prior market day).
QLD – Added 5/28/2026
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025, 2/6/2026 & 8/3/2026
XLK – Added 6/5/2026
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 13 gave Bear-signs and 9 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.)
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators improved from -9 to -4 (4 more Bear indicators than Bull 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 continued down, a BEARISH sign.
As one would expect, the ETFs tend to track the S&P 500 closely, but often with a lag due to the 10-day average. Now the ETFs are falling while the S&P 500 is powering higher. I suspect we have the lag effect now, but this indicator is giving a bearish sign since only 49% of the ETFs have been positive over the last 2-weeks. If that trend continues it will be cause for alarm.
I’m neutral until we see indicators improve.
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.
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
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
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 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.