Housing Starts / Permits ... Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis ...

 
“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
 
HOUSING STARTS / PERMITS (Fox Business)
“Housing starts slid 0.8% last month to an annual rate of 1.42 million units...in a sign the deep freeze that has paralyzed the housing market for months is not over yet, applications to build – which measures future construction – tumbled 8.8% to an annualized rate of 1.41 million units.” Story at... 
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/housing-starts-resume-downward-spiral-march-building-permits-plummet
 
BULLARD SAYS RECESSION FEARS OFF-BASE (Yahoo Finance / Bloomberg)
“Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he favored continued interest-rate hikes to counter persistent inflation, while recession fears are overblown... While Fed staff economists were predicting a mild recession, according to minutes of the March Fed meeting, Bullard disagreed. “The labor market just seems very, very strong,” Bullard said, according to Reuters. With the prospect of a hot jobs market supporting strong consumption, “it doesn’t seem like the moment to be predicting that you have a recession in the second half of 2023,” he said.” Story at...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-bullard-says-recession-fears-135802225.html
 
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Tuesday the S&P 500 rose about 0.1% to 4155.
-VIX fell about 0.7% to 16.83.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury dipped to 3.578%.
 
PULLBACK DATA:
-Drop from Top: 13.7% as of today. 25.4% max (on a closing basis).
-Trading Days since Top: 323-days.
The S&P 500 is 5.1% ABOVE its 200-dMA and 3% ABOVE 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 in the 3600 area.
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS:
I am not trading as much as in the past. You may wish to use the momentum charts and/or the Monday 40-day gain charts for trading the Dow stocks and ETFs.
XLK – Technology ETF.
XLE – Energy Sector ETF. It hasn’t been doing much recently, but Russia is cutting production and that should help the sector.  We have a good dividend in the meantime.
 
BA – Boeing has more work than they can handle and are hiring. They should do well going forward; however, Boeing was downgraded 4/4/2023 based on fears that they will not be able to ramp up production to meet demand. Thursday, 4/13/23, Boeing fell 5% after hours. “Boeing on Thursday warned it will likely have to reduce deliveries of its 737 Max airplane in the near term because of a problem with a part made by supplier Spirit AeroSystems.” From...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/13/boeing-warns-of-reduced-737-max-production-and-deliveries-due-to-parts-issue.html
Boeing reports earnings 4/26/2023. The warnings are not encouraging.
 
XLY - Consumer Discretionary ETF.
KRE – Regional Banking ETF. This is a small position for me.
SHY – Short term bonds. 30-day yield is 4%. (Trailing 1-year yield is 1.6%.) I’ll hold this, but if the market retests the lows, I’ll sell it and buy stocks.)
 
TODAY’S COMMENT:
The Blah market continues. The S&P 500 has not been able to get above its early February highs; the weekly rundown of indicators finished last week neutral (12-bear and 12-bull). (These indicators tend to be both long-term and short-term, so they are different than the 20 that I report on daily.); and selling pressure continues to slightly outpace buying pressure. None of these signs are bullish, but they are not particularly bearish either, since the bulls vs bears are evenly matched in other indicators. Markets are in a holding pattern and, so far, we don’t have good signs regarding which way they might break. Earnings may give a better clue as we get further into earnings season.
 
Today, the daily spread of 20 Indicators (Bulls minus Bears) declined from -3 to -5 (a positive number is bullish; negatives are bearish); the 10-day smoothed sum that smooths the daily fluctuations declined from +21 to +8. (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 HOLD: PRICE is positive; SENTIMENT, VOLUME & VIX are neutral.
 
(The important BUY in this indicator was on 21 October, 7-days after the bottom. For my NTSM overall signal, I suggested that a short-term buying opportunity occurred on 27 September (based on improved market internals on the retest), although without market follow-thru, I was unwilling to call a buy; however, I did close shorts and increased stock holdings. I issued a Buy-Signal on 4 October, 6-days before the final bottom, based on stronger market action that confirmed the market internals signal. The NTSM sell-signal was issued 20 December, 8 sessions before the high of this recent bear market, based on the bearish “Friday Rundown” of indicators.)
 
Bottom line: I am a cautious Bull, watching indicators as always. 
 
ETF - 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.
*For additional background on the ETF ranking system see NTSM Page at…
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
 
DOW STOCKS - TODAY’S MOMENTUM RANKING OF THE DOW 30 STOCKS (Ranked Daily)
DOW 30 momentum ranking follows:

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 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 most useful when they diverge from the Index.) 
 
 

...My current invested position is about 65% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. I’m usually about 50% invested in stocks.
 
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.