“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool,
Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
JOBLESS CLAIMS (Fox Business)
“The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits
slipped to a pandemic-era
low last week as more workers found jobs following the expiration of
supplemental payments. Data released Thursday by the Labor Department showed
initial jobless claims in the week ended Oct. 16 fell by 6,000 to 290,000...”
Story at...
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/initial-jobless-claims-october-16
PHILADELPHIA FED INDEX (FX Street)
“The Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported on Thursday that the
headline Manufacturing Activity Index of the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey
declined to 23.8 in October from 30.7 in September.” Story at...
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS (Conference Board via PR
Newswire)
“The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for
the U.S. increased by 0.2 percent in September to 117.5 (2016 = 100),
following a 0.8 percent increase in August and a 0.9 percent increase in July. "The
U.S. LEI rose again in September, though at a slower rate, suggesting the
economy remains on a more moderate growth trajectory compared to the first half
of the year," said Ataman Ozyildirim, Senior Director of Economic Research
at The Conference Board.” Press release at...
EXISTING HOME SALES (YahooFinance)
“Existing home sales rose 7% to a seasonally adjusted
6.29 million units in September from a month earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The results
outpaced analyst expectations...” Story at...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/existing-home-sales-september-2021-140035537.html
CORONAVIRUS (NTSM)
Here’s the latest from the COVID19 Johns Hopkins website as
of 10:30 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.
Almost 15% of the entire US population has had Covid.
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Thursday the S&P 500 rose about 0.3% to 4550.
-VIX dropped about 3% to 15.01.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.702%.
Not much change today, but still no down day!
The S&P 500 made a new all-time high today. 5.1% of
issues on the NYSE made new 52-week highs today. That’s below average, but
nothing to worry about. I get concerned if this stat is too low because it would
suggest that too few stocks are participating in the advance.
Today marks 7 days in a row that the S&P 500 finished
in positive territory! On longer terms,
the numbers are not particularly bearish and haven’t changed – 12-days have
been up over the last 20-days; and 7-days have been up over the last 10-days.
The daily sum of 20 Indicators slipped from +9 to +3 (a positive
number is bullish; negatives are bearish); the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths
the daily fluctuations improved from +37 to +45 (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 improved to BUY. Volume and Sentiment are bullish; Price and VIX indicators
are neutral.
Markets are almost looking too bulish, but not quite. For
now, I remain bullish.
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
I almost recommended Intel
last week. Glad I didn’t. It fell almost
9% after hours today on a poor earnings report.
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 slipped to NEUTRAL.
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 65% invested in stocks; this is above my “normal” fully
invested stock-allocation of 50% stocks. Indicators are very bullish, so I am
holding a short-term position in additional Index Funds to boost returns.
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.
