“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic
leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government
programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social
Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity.” - Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Open
Letter, 29 September 2021.
GDP (The Columbian)
“The U.S. economy expanded at a 6.7% annual pace from
April through June, the Commerce Department said Thursday, slightly upgrading
its estimate of last quarter’s growth in the face of a resurgence of COVID-19
in the form of the delta variant.” Story at...
https://www.columbian.com/news/2021/sep/30/u-s-slightly-revises-up-its-gdp-estimate-for-q2-to-6-7/
JOBLESS CLAIMS (Yahoo Finance)
“U.S. states saw an unexpected increase in initial
jobless filings last week, even as companies across industries looked to bring
on workers to fill widespread vacancies...Initial unemployment claims, week ended September 25: 362,000 vs. 330,000 expected...” Story at...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/weekly-jobless-claims-week-ended-september-25-2021-180212425.html
CHICAGO PMI (Advisor Perspectives)
“The latest Chicago Purchasing Manager's Index, or the
Chicago Business Barometer, fell to 64.7 in September - it's lowest since
February, from 66.8 in August...Values above 50.0 indicate expanding
manufacturing activity.” Commentary and charts at...
CORONAVIRUS (NTSM)
Here’s the latest from the COVID19 Johns Hopkins website as
of 4:30 PM Thursday. U.S. total case numbers are on the left axis; daily
numbers are on the right side of the graph in Red with the 10-dMA of daily
numbers in Green.
I added the smoothed 10-dMA of new cases (in purple) to
the chart.
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Thursday the S&P 500 fell about 1.2% to 4308.
-VIX rose about 3% to 23.14.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 1.487%.
Not too many bull signs out there. I expect the markets will continue to have
trouble.
Utilities (the XLU-ETF) were
down, but still outperformed the S&P 500 today, so defensive seems to be a
good idea.
The daily sum of 20 Indicators remained -10 (a positive
number is bullish; negatives are bearish); the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths
the daily fluctuations declined from -55 to -57 (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 SELL. VIX and Volume were bearish; Price & Sentiment
indicators are neutral.
Needless to say, I’m bearish.
I’m busy Friday, so the Blog
will be posted later than usual, Friday or Saturday.
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
THURSDAY 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.
My stock-allocation in the
portfolio is now about 45% invested in stocks; this is below my “normal” fully
invested allocation of 50%.
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 general rule, some
suggest that the % of portfolio invested in the stock market should be one’s
age subtracted from 100. So, a
30-year-old person would have 70% of the portfolio in stocks, stock mutual
funds and/or stock ETFs. That’s ok, but
for older investors, I usually don’t recommend keeping less than 50% invested
in stocks (as a fully invested position) since most people need some growth in
the portfolio to keep up with inflation.
