So much of the move lately has been a grind. Makes sense as an overbought market on the daily charts just can’t keep exploding higher. Now you have a few small negative divergences showing up making the job of the bulls tougher, but definitely not stopping them from a nail to the chalkboard move higher. Day by day we inch upward in to the teeth of these problems for the bulls and it makes you wonder when this market will finally take a right to the chin it just doesn’t see coming.
From my perspective the problem is, I know folks want plays and thus you search high and low for plays that are appropriate, but folks, I am going to get caught somewhere. I have to stay with the trend, but man, this market just doesn’t correct. It will! This is why no long-term port or too many plays but again, you have to have some scratch in the game.
Today was no different from the recent trend in place. A gap up and then a day of nowhere after the first thirty minutes have passed. If you’re in the right stocks you’re lucky and you do fine. It is arbitrary though. The market refused to sell much at any one time today and held the gains throughout. More grind. More overbought. More wondering when it snaps but staying long for now because it keeps on working and the bears can’t follow through, even when they get their reversal candle. At least not yet.
The key to this game in a market such as we have here is to make sure, as best as humanly possible, that you’re in both the right sector and the right set-ups within that sector, either in those handles, or if stocks are making appropriate 50-day exponential moving average tests. You have to be very stock specific. This is NOT a market of throwing a dart. If you do you’re in trouble. You need to do a tremendous amount of homework and hope that things work out even if you do everything right. Markets such as these cause problems when you over play them, so please keep that in mind. Please do not get too aggressive. It feels like you want more and more but when the correction hits, you won’t be happy if you’re in too many new plays.
Today we saw rotation which has been the name of the game. The financials reversed off the top some, although not much while the oversold commodity world made a nice strong move higher. When the music stops for this bull market the rotation will start to subside so we always need to keep an eye out for that but for now, the merry go round continues unabated.
Looking at the technicals within the market we see nothing has really changed all that dramatically. The advance-decline line continues favorable overall while new highs are holding well with new lows almost non-existent. There have been literally no days of distribution from a conventional point of view meaning no 10/1 volume down days that shows a red flag beginning to appear. As long as the selling days show little in the way of distribution and the buying days show favorable advance-decline lines we have to keep on the bullish track.
Bottom line is, I exhale hard every day we keep going higher without a pullback to unwind. I come from a more safety first approach. I know the majority will get hurt at some point and I don’t want all of you to be part of that majority. Some small hits for sure we can deal with. You can’t keep doing as well as we have been without taking a blow here and there. I keep wishing for some sustained selling but then I think about being long, so I don’t want too much, if you get my drift. Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing as the S&P 500 protects 1151.
Peace,
Jack
(iPath DJ-UBS Copper TR Sub-Idx ETN (JJC) index shows a solid base breakout in copper during the session…tends to be la leading economic indicator)
