“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
“Kansas City Fed president Jeffrey Schmid said on Thursday there seems no rush to cut interest rates, with inflation still above the central bank's 2% target and the labor market still in solid shape. ‘I think we're in a really good spot and I think we really have to have very definitive data to be moving that policy right now,’ said Schmid, a voter on interest rate policy this year, said in a CNBC interview.” Story at...
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gYDFlo6uiEHvOeGvrIR6veB5-MZXKch8
My cmt: Looks like those expecting Powell to “pre-announce” a rate cut in September are going to be disappointed. Schmid just pre-announced from Jackson Hole that Powell won’t pre-announce from Jackson Hole tomorrow. Schmid isn’t the only one...
“Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack said Thursday that the case for cutting interest rates in September would be a hard one to make given recent economic data. ‘There's a lot of data we're going to get between now and September and I walk into every meeting with an open mind about what the right thing to do is, but with the data I have right now and with the information I have, if the meeting was tomorrow, I would not see a case for reducing interest rates,’ Hammack told Yahoo Finance at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.” Story at...
Cleveland Fed President says 'would not see a case' for September rate cut given latest economic data
“Manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia area has weakened in the month of August, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia revealed in a report released on Thursday. The much bigger than expected decrease by the headline index partly reflected a downturn by new orders, as the new orders plummeted to a negative 1.9 in August from a positive 18.4 in July.” Story at...
https://www.rttnews.com/3568157/philly-fed-index-unexpectedly-returns-to-negative-territory-in-august.aspx#
“In the week through Aug. 16, new jobless-claims filings rose to 235,000, up from 224,000 a week earlier. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal were forecasting 225,000 claims. Continuing claims, an indicator of the size of the total unemployed population, came in at 1.97 million in the week through Aug. 9... The figure sets a new high since November 2021, evidence that sluggish hiring is frustrating job searchers.” Story at...
https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/u-s-jobless-claims-rose-last-week-25b93181?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAjGUIIOIjHsUdaVNlVSuJJFTLmHRyg6EH6NWrWHKIhjMDum_rGd_UI9NzkebBs%3D&gaa_ts=68a77b22&gaa_sig=pMmYQaAQ3mNVsNu7mW-4T3HMEG21-T3rkp4SvoZ9TWta8KxCi47H9A01w9XlKf5OuRmnNkYrM_m2euxOOqYozw%3D%3D
“Existing home sales increased in July by 2% and were up 0.8% year over year.” Video at...
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/existing-home-sales-july-upswing-161715131.html
-Thursday the S&P 500 declined about 0.4% to 6370.
-VIX rose about 6% to 16.60.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.326% (compared to about this time prior market day).
None
Today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 14 gave Bear-signs and 6 were Bullish. The rest are neutral. (It is normal to have a lot of neutral indicators since many of the indicators are top or bottom indicators that will signal only at extremes.)
TODAY’S COMMENT
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators declined from zero to -8 (8 more Bear indicators than Bull indicators) and is now giving a Bearish indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread is still rising – a bullish sign, but just barely. The rate of increase has fallen precipitously.
I have to be bearish now, but I don’t see signs that a big crash is coming.
TODAY’S RANKING OF 15 ETFs (Ranked Daily) ETF ranking follows:
*For additional background on the ETF ranking system see NTSM Page at…
http://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/exchange-traded-funds-etf-ranking.html
For more details, see NTSM Page at…
https://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/a-system-for-trading-dow-30-stocks-my_8.html
50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (75% is my max stock allocation when I am confident that markets will continue higher; 30% in stocks is my Bear market position.)
I trade about 15-20% of the total portfolio using the momentum-based analysis I provide here. When I see bullish signs, I add a lot more stocks to the portfolio, usually by using an S&P 500 ETF as I did back in October 2022 and 2023.
