Wednesday, February 25, 2026

… Momentum Trading DOW Stocks & ETFs … Stock Market Analysis

 
Political Cartoons From Dick Wright
Dick Wright has been an award-winning editorial cartoonist for decades, drawing for the San Diego Union, the Providence Journal, Scripps-Howard Newspapers and the Columbus Dispatch.
 
“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.”
 
AMERICAS BILLS WILL COME DUE (WSJ)
“The first law of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging. The Trump administration didn’t get this memo. Despite America’s large and deepening budget deficit, President Trump has endorsed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s request for a $500 billion increase in annual appropriations for the 2027 military budget. Administration officials are reportedly at odds about how to spend this money… the path to fiscal responsibility must begin now, in the 2027 budget… They shouldn’t enact spending for defense—or any other item—that raises the budget deficit above the baseline. Nor should they enact new tax cuts that raise the deficit. This is what it means to stop digging.” William A Galston, WSJ Opinion writer, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Opinion at,,,
 
-Wednesday the S&P 500 rose about 0.8% to 6946.
-VIX declined about 8% to 17.93.
-The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.058% (compared to about this time prior market day).
 
MY TRADING POSITIONS
SPY – Added 12/1/2025.
NVDA – Added 12/1/2025 & 2/6/2026
 
CURRENT SUMMARY OF APPROXIMATELY 50 INDICATORS:
At the close today, of the 50-Indicators I track, 9 gave Bear-signs and 11 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 improved from -8 to +2 (2 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 continued down, a BEARISH sign.
 
Indicators have been flopping back and forth recently so they aren’t helping too much.
 
The S&P 500 is only 0.5% below its all-time high. It has now bounced above its 50-dMA. That’s a positive sign, but the Bearish Ascending Wedge remains so there is still a concern that the markets could slip into correction.
 
If they do, levels of support are 6800, the 100-dMA and the 200-dMA: The S&P 500 is 1.7% above the 100-dMA and 6.1% above the 200-dMA.
 
For now, all we can do is watch the chart; markets are not out of the woods yet.
 
BOTTOM LINE
I am remaining a nervous neutral on the markets.
 
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…
 
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…
 
WEDNESDAY MARKET INTERNALS (NYSE DATA)
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.) 
 
 
 
 
My invested position is about 55% stocks, including stock mutual funds and ETFs. 50% invested in stocks is a normal, conservative position for a retiree. (80% 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.
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