Friday, May 21, 2021

Markit Composite Manufacturing and Services Indices ... Existing Home Sales ... Is this the Big One? … Coronavirus (Covid-19) … Stock Market Analysis … ETF Trading … Dow 30 Ranking

“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.

 

“The big money is not in the buying and selling. But in the waiting.” - Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway

 

“In my decades of investing experience, I have not seen such mindless and uninformed speculation as I have witnessed recently. Indeed, in nominal dollar terms...it is far in excess of the dot.com boom.” – Doug Cass.

 

“I never imagined that I would see the day that the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee would step forward to call for raw [Supreme] court packing. It is a sign of our current political environment where rage overwhelms reason.” - Professor Jonathan Turley, honorary Doctorate of Law from John Marshall Law School for his contributions to civil liberties and the public interest.

 

IHS MARKIT COMPOSITE MANUFACTURING / SERVICES (Markit Economics)

Private sector firms across the US signaled an unprecedented expansion in business activity in May. Growth was driven by the fastest service sector upturn on record, with the increase in manufacturing output also accelerating amid stronger client demand... The steep rise in costs fed through to the sharpest increase in output charges since data collection began in October 2009, with record rates of inflation registered for both goods and services as soaring demand boosted firms’ pricing power.” Press release at...

https://www.markiteconomics.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/392edb090fd34a7cb68bf22a1ddb7789

 

EXISTING HOME SALES (YahooFinance)

“Existing home sales fell 2.7% to a seasonally adjusted 5.58 million in April, from a month earlier... "Low inventory continues to hinder sales activity," said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist.” Story at...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/existing-home-sales-april-2021-140007789-140119590.html

 

IS THIS THE BIG ONE (Heritage Capital)

“In a word, no. It’s just another normal and healthy pullback in a young bull market. As you know, I do think we will see a 10%+ market correction this year with the peak forming between May 1 and September 1 as I have said before. However, the data do not suggest that high is already in place.”  Commentary at...

https://investfortomorrow.com/blog/is-this-the-big-one-i-am-coming-elizabeth/

 

CORONAVIRUS (NTSM)

Here’s the latest from the COVID19 Johns Hopkins website as of 5:30pm Friday. US total case numbers are on the left axis; daily numbers are on the right side of the graph with the 10-dMA of daily numbers in Green.


MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS

-Friday the S&P 500 slipped about 0.1% to 4156.

-VIX dropped about 3% to 20.15.

-The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 1.619%.

 

Here’s Friday’s run-down of some important indicators. These tend to be both long-term and short-term, so they are somewhat different than the 20 that I report on daily.

 

BULL SIGNS

-The 50-dMA % of issues advancing on the NYSE (Breadth) is above 50%.

-The 100-dMA of the % of issues advancing on the NYSE (Breadth) is above 50%.

-The size of up-moves has been larger than the size of down-moves over the last month

-Cyclical Industrials (XLI-ETF) are out-performing the S&P 500.

-Slope of the 40-dMA of New-highs is rising.

-Long-term new-high/new-low data is rising sharply.

 

NEUTRAL

-VIX is flat - neutral.

-The 5-10-20 Timer System is HOLD; the 5-dEMA and 10-dEMA are NOT both above the 20-dEMA. 

-We had a 4 Distribution Days recently, but not enough to send a signal.

-Bollinger Bands – currently neutral.

-RSI.

-Overbought/Oversold Index (Advance/Decline Ratio).

-Non-crash Sentiment indicator remains neutral, but it is too bullish and that means the signal is leaning bearish.

-The Fosback High-Low Logic Index is neutral.

-There have been 6 Statistically-Significant days in the last 15-days. This signal can be Bearish or Bullish. Let’s call it neutral now.

-There have been 3 up-days over the last 10-days. Neutral.

-There have been 9 up-days over the last 20 days. Neutral

-Statistically, the S&P 500 gave a panic-signal, 12 May. This one can be bearish or bullish. The signal has expired.

-The market has broadened out; 16.6% of all issues traded on the NYSE made new, 52-week highs when the S&P 500 made a new all-time-high 7 May. (there is no bullish signal for this indicator.) Currently, the value is above average and suggests that if we do have a correction from here it would likely be less than 10% - maybe. This number is getting so high that one wonders whether it is too bullish.

-14 May, the 52-week, New-high/new-low ratio improved by 0.7 standard deviations, somewhat bullish, but not enough to give a signal.

-The S&P 500 is 11.6% above its 200-dMA (Sell point is 12%.). This value was 15.9% above the 200-dMA when the 10% correction occurred in Sep 2020.

-The S&P 500 is out-performing Utilities ETF (XLU), but not by much, so I’ll call this one neutral for now.

-48% of the 15-ETFs that I track have been up over the last 10-days.

 

BEAR SIGNS

-The 10-dMA of issues advancing on the NYSE (Breadth) is below 50%

-MACD of the percentage of issues advancing on the NYSE (breadth) made a bearish crossover 19 May.

-The Smart Money (late-day action) is falling. (This indicator is based on the Smart Money Indicator developed by Don Hayes).

-McClellan Oscillator is bearish.

-MACD of S&P 500 price made a bearish crossover 22 Apr.

-Breadth on the NYSE compared to the S&P 500 index is bearish – the Index is too far ahead of stocks advancing on the NYSE.

-Short-term new-high/new-low data is falling.

-My Money Trend indicator is falling.

-The smoothed advancing volume on the NYSE is falling.

 

On Friday, 21 February, 2 days after the top of the Coronavirus pullback, there were 10 bear-signs and 1 bull-sign. Now there are 9 bear-signs and 6 bull-signs. Last week, there were 8 bear-signs and 9 bull-signs.

 

The Bear-signs outnumbered the Bear-signs, but not by much.  There is only 1 top-signal; the Index is too far ahead of breadth.

 

The daily sum of 20 Indicators slipped from -4 to -5 (a positive number is bullish; negatives are bearish); the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths the daily fluctuations dropped from -51 to -58 (These numbers sometimes change after I post the blog based on data that comes in late.) Most of these indicators are short-term and many are trend following.

 

The Long Term NTSM indicator ensemble remained HOLD. Price is Bullish; Volume is bearish; VIX, & Sentiment are neutral.

 

I did buy some today. I added Goldman Sachs (GS) and sold JP Morgan (JPM). I also added Boeing (BA). I think BA has bottomed.

 

I am at a conservative stock-allocation of 45% in stocks. I am neutral on the stock market. Indicators are really reasonably flat; price action isn’t helping to sway me in either direction. It’s a worry that the S&P 500 has gone nowhere in more than a month. We’ll see.

 

MOMENTUM ANALYSIS:

TODAY’S RANKING OF 15 ETFs (Ranked Daily)

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

 

TODAY’S RANKING OF THE DOW 30 STOCKS (Ranked Daily)

Here’s the revised DOW 30 and its momentum analysis. 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

 

FRIDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)

Market Internals remained BEARISH on the market.

 

Market Internals are a decent trend-following analysis of current market action, but should not be used alone for short term trading. They are usually right, but they are often late.  They are most useful when they diverge from the Index. 

 

Using the Short-term indicator in 2018 in SPY would have made a 5% gain instead of a 6% loss for buy-and-hold. The methodology was Buy on a POSITIVE indication and Sell on a NEGATIVE indication and stay out until the next POSITIVE indication. The back-test included 13-buys and 13-sells, or a trade every 2-weeks on average.  

As of 19 April, my stock-allocation is about 40% invested in stocks. I hadn’t intended to drop this low, but I took profits in both Boeing and Intel due to their dropping out of the top 3 in momentum. I’ll move back in when conditions appear more favorable.

 

You may wish to have a higher or lower % invested in stocks depending on your risk tolerance. 50% is a conservative position that I consider fully invested for most retirees. As a retiree, 50% in the stock market is about fully invested for me – it is a cautious and conservative number. If I feel very confident, I might go to 60%; if a correction is deep enough, and I can call a bottom, 80% would not be out of the question.

 

The markets have not retested the lows on recent corrections and that left me under-invested on the bounces. I will need to put less reliance on retests in the future.