Impeach Trump – Blackmailing Europe is an Act of War … Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
It was a busy day so today’s post is later than usual.
 
“Trade what you see; not what you think.” – The Old Fool, Richard McCranie, trader extraordinaire.
 
“Far more money has been lost by investors in preparing for corrections, or anticipating corrections, than has been lost in the corrections themselves.” - Peter Lynch, former manager of Fidelity’s Magellan® fund.
   
"This is maybe the most dangerous market of my career, and that includes 1987's crash, that includes the savings and loan debacle market of the early '90s, that includes the 1999 to 2009 lost decade in the S&P 500 in the dot-com bubble. This is the most difficult market of my 45 years." -  Bill Smead, Smead Value Fund (SMVLX), May 2025.”
 
TRUMP THE CLIMATE NONENTITY (WSJ-Excerpt)
“The New York Times is always entertaining when it grapples, or fails to grapple, with climate change, the scale of which simply eludes it.
It says of Donald Trump, “The president’s embrace of fossil fuels . . . will make it hard to keep warming at safe levels.” The reality: U.S. election outcomes are completely invisible in the climate data. Even very large events, such as Covid or the collapse of Soviet industry, at most leave a noticeable indent only on the varying annual rate of emissions increase, not overall atmospheric CO2.
 
The largest human CO2 event in history, the emergence of China as an industrial power, on an emissions graph appears only as a continuation of an uninterrupted upward trend since the Industrial Revolution… Last April came a small but telling explosion in the climate community. On behalf of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, a former John Kerry climate aide, Varun Sivaram, inaugurated a program dedicated to “climate realism.” It conceded many long-obvious points: U.S. emissions have become too small a share of the global total to affect the climate outcome...
…Meanwhile, Mr. Trump at least can hope to be a climate footnote in place of the enlarged role the Times tries to assign him. Ironically, he will share the footnote with his most frothing Democratic critic, Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker: Both men have been working lately to advance carbon-free nuclear.” – Holman Jenkins, Jr., editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. Commentary at…
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-the-climate-nonentity-09e59dff
 
TRUST ERODES IN GOVERNMENT (WSJ- Letters)
“Karl Rove makes a persuasive case that many of the standard measures used to judge a year—economic growth, employment, inflation, crime—don’t justify the level of public unease (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of 2025,” op-ed, Dec. 30). Yet something else lies at the center of that discontent.
Trust erodes when governance appears transactional rather than principled. When pardons, tax policy and access to power seem tied to loyalty or financial benefit, citizens begin to doubt individual decisions and the fairness of the system itself. No amount of messaging will resolve that; only honesty and transparency can.” - Lori Devlin
 
TRUMP BLACKMAILS EUROPE (BBC)
“Donald Trump has vowed to "100%" follow through on his threat to impose tariffs on European countries who oppose his demand to take control of Greenland. European allies have rallied around Greenland's sovereignty. Denmark's foreign minister emphasised [sic] the US president cannot threaten his way to ownership of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.” Story at…
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g5345ylk0o
My cmt: This is an act of war. Trump should be impeached.
 
TRUMP LINKS GREENLAND THREATS TO MISSING OUT ON NOBEL PRIZE (WSJ)
“Denmark dispatched additional troops to Greenland on Monday as President Trump added a new dimension to his pursuit of the Danish island, telling Norway that he no longer needed to think “purely of peace” after not winning the Nobel Peace Prize.” Story at…
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/trump-links-greenland-threats-to-missing-out-on-nobel-prize-3076eecc?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqcUF1tKWuEwCaz2sAu0dmpJvWxDc0KJPSBban8xx4PxpR0DeZaFItEPkQn9x-c%3D&gaa_ts=696fd214&gaa_sig=D4QN5Z-vh3xpQe1XO6XQAjSCKSrFwidFSZipOi9YqsdKD3dA5MJIcaNdcYPYmS7nHdfdTL1DCHX6IvaYdw7dlw%3D%3D’
My cmt: This is an act of insanity. Trump should be institutionalized.
 
MARKET REPORT / ANALYSIS
-Tuesday the S&P 500 declined about 2.1% to 6797.
-VIX rose about 27% to 20.09.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.287% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
XLK – Added 11/26/2025 & 12/1/2025
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added a small position 12/1/2025.
SSO – Added 1/7/2026.
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 8 gave Bear-signs and 12 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
On Friday there were only 2 bear signs, but they were significant: (1) There was a bearish crossover in MACD. (2) The other was that 100% of the ETF’s I track are now above their 120-dMAs. That often indicates a top, although the indicator is not a timely signal, nor does it tell us if it is an important top.
 
Additionally, the S&P 500 chart exhibited a rising wedge, a bearish topping signal. Over the weekend, I wrote myself a note – “Sell SSO?” It isn’t good to hold leveraged positions in downturns. Unfortunately, we were Trumped by more Tariffs. I am holding SSO for a day or so to see how this shakes out.
 
The daily, bull-bear spread of 50-indicators declined from +19 to +4 (4 more Bull indicators than Bear indicators), a NEUTRAL indication.  I consider +5 to -5 the neutral zone. The 10-dMA curve of the spread (purple on the chart above) that smooths daily fluctuations reversed down a bearish sign.
 
The 50-dMA is now 6830 and the S&P 500 broke below that level in the afternoon and closed at 6797, about 0.5% below the 50-day. That’s a concern if the index closes below its 50-day Wednesday.
 
There were a few bullish signs:
-Tuesday was a statistically significant down-day. That just means that the price-volume move exceeded my statistical parameters. Statistics show that a statistically-significant, down-day is followed by an up-day about 60% of the time. 
-Bollinger Bands are oversold.
-Today’s large move down triggered my Panic indicator. At tops, this is a bearish indicator; at bottoms, it is bullish. What is it now? Hard to say, but for now I’ll call it bullish. If the markets continue lower then I’ll have to change my view.
 
If markets do continue down, the S&P 500 is about 0.8% above its 100-dMA. A drop to the 200-dMA would be a 7% decline.
 
BOTTOM LINE
The S&P 500 is close to its lower trendline and the 100-dMA. I think markets go up from here. I’m cautiously bullish and fully invested, but I’ll be watching the markets closely. Futures are higher as I write this – let’s hope it stays that way.
 
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)
 

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 declined to HOLD. (My basket of Market Internals is a decent trend-following analysis that is most useful when it diverges from the Index.) 
 
 
 
 

My invested position is about 60% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs (although I should calculate this number). 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 although I don’t trade as much as I used to. 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.