“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
“...Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) this week warned the American people that a Trump nominee for a State Department position was an extremist, cut from the same cloth as the Iranian mullahs and religious extremists. Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, revealed his dangerous proclivities to Kaine in his opening statement when he said that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”
It was a line that should be familiar to any citizen — virtually ripped from the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary.
Yet Kaine offered a very surprising response in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said....
...Kaine’s view — that advocates of natural law are no different from mullahs applying Sharia law — is not just ill-informed but would have been considered by the founders as constitutionally blasphemous.
He is, regrettably, the embodiment of a new crisis of faith in the foundations of our republic on the very eve of its 250th anniversary. This is a crisis of faith not just in our Constitution, but in each other as human beings “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” – Jonathon Turley. Turley holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches torts, criminal procedure, and constitutional law.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/09/08/the-mark-of-kaine-how-a-senators-remarks-borders-on-constitutional-blasphemy/#more-235451
My cmt: Kaine voted to “block the sale of assault rifles to Israel...[and] to block the sale of more than $675 million in arms sales” (from Newsweek) to Israel.
https://investfortomorrow.com/blog/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-but-smalls-caps-are-delivering/
“U.S. jobs growth was much slower than previously reported, according to revised data released on Tuesday. The number of jobs created in the United States from April 2024 to March 2025 was revised down by 911,000 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That would roughly amount to 76,000 fewer jobs created each month of the year up until March.... The August jobs report showed that the U.S. added only 22,000 jobs that month... Revisions to BLS data are a normal part of the process and do not suggest any impropriety. The annual statistics are revised every year with additional data that the Bureau collects. Some of that data is not available at the time it publishes monthly jobs reports, such as data from the Census Bureau or unemployment insurance records.” Story at...
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/911000-fewer-jobs-created-april-2024-march-2025-bls-says-rcna230065
“So far in 2025, the economy has added an average of about 74,000 private-sector jobs a month, according to the Labor Department, a step down from last year’s average gain of about 130,000 jobs. Take away the roughly 64,000 jobs that health services have been adding each month, though, and the remainder of the private sector has been contributing only about 9,400 jobs a month.”
Story and chart from ...
https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/healthcare-job-creation-charts-us-economy-adf2ff89?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAj-OJv_-0PxLoKPreKmSLE3QGhNEF-OainQaixHUHbDBS7TnpdsUYQdzV0fUeA%3D&gaa_ts=68c09615&gaa_sig=f9QbR8PGR8J_0s-oKDaiTYq-lRs4BEovov_SRxyLt6h9rPTcIZ0xIlHvN68YkGS9ddtVgR7DhAA_cFPlKL7o5Q%3D%3D
-Tuesday the S&P 500 rose about 0.3% to 6513.
-VIX declined about 0.5% to 15.04.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.086% (compared to about this time prior market day).
SPY – Added 8/26/2025
XLK – Added 8/26/2025
Today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 8 gave Bear-signs and 14 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 – NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN YESTERDAY
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators declined from +8 to +6 (6 more Bull indicators than Bear indicators) and is now giving a mildly Bullish indication. I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread remained headed down, but not sharply – a bearish sign.
Today, there was a Bollinger Squeeze signal that occurs when Bollinger Bands are close together. “A Bollinger Band... is defined by a series of lines that are plotted two standard deviations—both positively and negatively—away from the simple moving average (SMA) of the price of an asset... A Squeeze is triggered when volatility reaches a six-month low and is identified when Bollinger Bands reach a six-month minimum distance apart...” The Bollinger Squeeze predicts a big move (breakout) in the S&P 500, but it doesn’t tell us the direction of such a move. To determine breakout direction, Bollinger suggests looking at other indicators. He suggests using the relative strength index (RSI). Bollinger bands are discussed at Investopedia...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accumulationdistribution.asp
RSI is near the middle of its range so it will not tell us what direction a breakout may be. In addition, Bollinger mentions a few other indicators I don’t use. From my indicators we see that the daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators remains bullish. This suggests the breakout should be upward, but there isn’t a lot of conviction on the call.
I am cautiously bullish.
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
For more details, see NTSM Page at…
https://navigatethestockmarket.blogspot.com/p/a-system-for-trading-dow-30-stocks-my_8.html
My basket of Market Internals remained HOLD. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it diverges from the Index.)
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.
