“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool,
Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
“People always ask me what is going on in the markets. It
is simple. Greatest Speculative Bubble of All Time in All Things. By two orders
of magnitude.” – Michael “Big Short” Burry.
JOBLESS CLAIMS (CNBC)
“Weekly jobless claims tumbled last week, reaching a
fresh 52-year low as the U.S. jobs market climbs out of its pandemic-era hole,
the Labor Department reported Thursday. Initial filings for unemployment
insurance totaled 184,000 for the week ended Dec. 4, the lowest going back to
Sept. 6, 1969...” Story at...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/09/us-weekly-jobless-claims.html
SENATE CLEARS LAST HURDLE TO RAISE DEBT CEILING (NY
Times)
“The Senate on Thursday cleared away the last major
hurdle to raising the debt ceiling,
effectively ending a Republican blockade and all but guaranteeing that Congress
will be able to move quickly in the coming days to steer the government away
from a first-ever federal default.” Story at...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/us/politics/debt-ceiling-congress.html
14 Republicans
voted to allow a vote on the issue, thereby avoiding a filibuster. The Senate action allows the Debt ceiling to
be raised without Republican votes.
Trump criticized Sen. McConnell (Republican) for
brokering the deal. Apparently, Trump prefers
a collapse in the stock market and general economic turmoil. Failure to raise the ceiling would
cause havoc for millions of people, but might help Trump get re-elected. The man only cares about himself.
CORONAVIRUS (NTSM)
Here’s the latest from the COVID19 Johns Hopkins website as of 9:00 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 0.7% to 4667.
-VIX rose about 8% to 21.58.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 1.493%.
Do we have a Santa rally or is this Rally failing at
all-time highs? It’s too early to tell, but the Index has been at this level
about 7 times so I am a little concerned.
The S&P 500 has struggled at the 4700 level and here we go again.
Let’s hope we break higher and put 4700 in the rear view mirror.
The daily sum of 20 Indicators remained zero (a positive
number is bullish; negatives are bearish); the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths
the daily fluctuations improved from -101 to -99 (These numbers sometimes
change after I post the blog based on data that comes in late.) Most of these
indicators are short-term so they tend to bounce around a lot.
The Long Term NTSM indicator ensemble
remained HOLD. VIX, Volume, Price & Sentiment are Neutral.
I am bullish. We’ll just have to see how long the bullish
trend remains.
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 HOLD.
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 slightly above my
“normal” fully invested stock-allocation of 50%. I’ll hold that position until
I see first signs of weakness. The goal here is to use cash for short-term
gains and then return to cash with 50% invested in stocks.
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.
