Best DOW Stocks ... Best ETFs … Stock Market Analysis ... Consumer Confidence

 
“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
 
“For decades we disagreed with [Supreme] Court rulings when progressives held sway, but we never called the Court illegitimate. But now that the left has lost the Court as a backup legislature for its policy goals, the institution is supposedly broken. Tell us again who is the threat to democratic institutions?” – WSJ Editorial Board.
  

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE (Conference Board via PRnewswire)
“The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® decreased in October after back-to-back monthly gains. The Index now stands at 102.5 (1985=100), down from 107.8 in September..."Consumer confidence retreated in October, after advancing in August and September," said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. "The Present Situation Index fell sharply, suggesting economic growth slowed to start Q4. Consumers' expectations regarding the short-term outlook remained dismal. The Expectations Index is still lingering below a reading of 80—a level associated with recession—suggesting recession risks appear to be rising." Press release at...
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-consumer-confidence-declined-in-october-301658584.html
 
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Tuesday the S&P 500 rose about 1.6% to 3859.
-VIX dipped about 5% to 28.46.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.103%.
 
PULLBACK DATA:
-Drop from Top: 20.8 19.5% as of today. 25.4% max (on a closing basis).
-Trading Days since Top: 203 204-days.
The S&P 500 is 8.1 6.5% Below its 200-dMA & 2.1 0.2% Below its 50-dMA.
*I won’t call the correction over until the S&P 500 makes a new-high; however, evidence suggests the bottom was / is in the 3600 area and I am fully invested with a higher percentage of stocks than normal.
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS:
XLI – Industrial ETF
QLD – 2x Nas 100
DDM – 2x Dow 30
XLK – Technology ETF
 
CVX – (I may hold this as a long-term position. I already owned a small position in CVX.)
 
TODAY’S COMMENT:
There are very few bear signs now: Bollinger Bands are overbought, but RSI is not. On the bullish side, there have only been 9 up-days in the last month and 6 up-days in the last 10-days  Neither are particularly bearish, so the rally should be able to continue at the current pace as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) continues. My VIX indicator finally dropped into neutral territory. The 5-10-20-Timer flipped to the bullish side. Smart Money is buying. I still have three Bottom Indicators that are bullish: Sentiment; Breadth vs the S&P 500; and the 50-day Fosback Logic Indicator. Woo-hoo. “Looking good, Billy Ray; Feeling good, Lewis.”
 
Will Microsoft spoil the party? MSFT beat on revenues and earnings, but cloud revenues were weak. Alphabet (Google) missed on revenues and earnings. We’ll see, but in the near term, investors gave us a buy signal in late September and that signal won’t be negated soon unless indicators drastically fall. I don’t expect that they will.
 
Today, the daily sum of 20 Indicators rose from +16 to +17 (a positive number is bullish; negatives are bearish); the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths the daily fluctuations improved from +62 to +73. (The trend direction is more important than the actual number for the 10-day value.) These numbers sometimes change after I post the blog based on data that comes in late. Most of these 20 indicators are short-term so they tend to bounce around a lot.
 
LONG-TERM INDICATOR: The Long Term NTSM indicator remained BUY: VIX is neutral; SENTIMENT, PRICE & VOLUME are bullish. 
 
Bottom line: I’m a Bull: I’m now invested with about 75% of the portfolio invested in stocks. (As a retiree, 50% invested in stocks is my “normal” portfolio.) 75% stocks is uber-bullish and that’s as far as I’ll go.
 
BEST ETFs - MOMENTUM ANALYSIS:
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.
#1. XLE  #2. ITA #3. IBB

*For additional background on the ETF ranking system see NTSM Page at…
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
 
BEST DOW STOCKS - TODAY’S MOMENTUM RANKING OF THE DOW 30 STOCKS (Ranked Daily)
DOW 30 momentum ranking follows:
#1. CVX  #2. AMGN #3. JPM

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
 
TUESDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)

My basket of Market Internals remained BUY.
(Market Internals are a decent trend-following analysis of current market action, but should not be used alone for short term trading. They are most useful when they diverge from the Index.) 
 
 

...My current invested position is about 75% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. I’m usually about 50% invested in stocks. I’ll cut back on stocks if we see serious bear signs.
 
I trade about 15-20% of the total portfolio using the momentum-based analysis I provide here. If I can see a definitive bottom, I’ll add a lot more stocks to the portfolio using an S&P 500 ETF.