ETF Prophet

Dear Subscriber, Today's "lower highs" bounce was a bit in the "obligatory" camp on particularly weak new-highs participation (see attached chart).  In fact, were it not for a positive new-month seasonal bias through Wednesday, I'd read the dashboard as slightly bearish tonight.  With all the Middle-East developments, don't forget that this week presents a very [...]

The reflexive rebound came on lighter volume but breadth was decent with the energy and material stocks leading.  Bears will have to deal with the beginning of month seasonality tomorrow.  The bounce today was not enough to offset the ugly breakdown on Friday, but another big up day tomorrow will likely squeeze some early bears.

Intel was halted and is releasing news that it is cutting 1st quarter guidance because of a chipset design error.   Even though it raised full year revenue later but mentioned 1st quarter margin would come under pressure.   I believe INTC would continue to see margin pressure as more cost efficient and lower priced chips from ARM Holdings continue to gain [...]

Late night futures were able to turn things around, leaving us with a positive disposition for the day.  Internals are very strong, although I noticed that the QQQQ’s pivot offered market-wide resistance.

A quick look at the FSC Lazy Man template shows DBC as the strongest momentum candidate at the current time with all other components down-slope.  The portfolio was adjusted according 15 minutes prior to the Friday close. Just to clarify a few reader questions: the VIX is not a computational component of the Rotator but is simply [...]

Dear Subscriber, With as many momentum divergences as had developed by late last week, it was interesting to me just how badly conditions in the Middle East had to deteriorate before Western markets finally took notice. While the S&P 500 only finished down -0.5% on the week, the Emerging markets ETF, EEM, finished down a [...]

With as many momentum divergences as had developed by late last week, it was interesting to me just how badly conditions in the Middle East had to deteriorate before Western markets finally took notice. While the S&P 500 only finished down -0.5% on the week, the Emerging markets ETF, EEM, finished down a full -2.5%, [...]

To follow up with last post, and also nicely tying into Engineering Returns’ recent sector rotational system I will show a factor decomposition of the S&P 500 from different sectors. In essence, you can think of it as a multifactor analysis where I try to determine what sectors are relevant for a given period in [...]

Today we had a number of good reasons for selling. Earnings reports from Amazon, Microsoft and Ford were weak, the fourth quarter GDP came in soft, and there was the unrest in Egypt . The Egypt situation creates uncertainty and raises speculation that unrest could spread throughout the Middle East or could impact oil transportation [...]

For a long time I’ve been intrigued by the idea of looking at specific sectors of the economy when predicting next day SPY move. Looking at sectors makes a lot of sense to me.  Sectors carry specific information of how the economy is doing and what kind of positions large investors are favoring. Defensive sectors [...]

Today’s global macro rout has us set by nearly a week of gains.  Price caught a bid at the bottom of the recent trading range, but I’d posit it would be rare to not see some lower lows in the days ahead.

What might tip the scales… from last night’s ETFR Newsletter: In spite of a positive disposition for most of the day, the S&P 500 found fairly consistent supply at the 1,300 level, leaving price to remain within its recent range. Sour earnings after the bell have a slight pullback underway, and, although the summary dashboard [...]

As promised yesterday, here’s the current performance record for the Lazy Man trading system originally posted on Dec 31st, 2009. The green line reflects the Lazy Man equity curve as opposed to the corresponding chart of SPY shown in orange.

The Down Jones is close to hitting the headlines with a close above the 12,000 level as the the seemingly inexorable upwards grind continued.  I happened to glance at a weekly chart of the Dow and was quite amazed what I saw. I hadn't realised the recent rally had been so consistent on a weekly [...]

Dear Subscriber, In spite of a positive disposition for most of the day, the S&P 500 found fairly consistent supply at the 1,300 level, leaving price to remain within its recent range.  Sour earnings after the bell have a slight pullback underway, and, although the summary dashboard looks the same as yesterday (a veritable draw), [...]

The indices didn’t make much progress today with retailers, chipmakers and regional banks leading.  The overall the action was upbeat, but we could be getting close to yet another small correction.  MSFT accidentally released its earnings before the closing bell.  It spiked initially on strong numbers but came back in on talk of slowing computer [...]