ETF Prophet

The first quarter of 2011 is in the books, and it was the best since 1998 from Yahoo headline.  We shrugged off high oil today and will we do the same to the jobs number tomorrow?  Last couple of times the expectation was high and produced very little movement.  The bulls are still in charge [...]

Dear Subscriber, Like today's news featuring poorer than expected jobless claims numbers but better factory orders, markets put in an overall mixed, inside day — burning off our official overbought status reverting to an overall neutral outlook for tomorrow given a very slight negative mean reversion signal, and yet an aligned bullish trend reading.  You [...]

On behalf of the ETF Prophet team, I’d like to warmly welcome our tenth contributor and third international correspondent, Frank Hassler of Engineering Returns. Those of you who follow Frank’s work know what a terrific fit his ideas are among the author’s we highlight here at ETF Prophet, including well documented research and provided Ami-broker [...]

Oil is up nearly two percent, but equities are holding in well in spite of it. However, internals are leaning flat to slightly weak (cumulative tick), so I am watching key resistance at prior highs very closely.

A low-volume, V-shaped bounce is exactly what we have seen once again. We cut through resistance and just kept running despite poor news flow.  The financials roared out of the blocks during the first 90 minutes of trading, then nothing.  We continue to see stock filing after stock filing, but it is being absorbed by [...]

Here’s today’s version of yesterday’s Lazy Man chart with XLF as the focus ETF. Once again EEM was the standout leader but close behind was the LM pick of the week…XLB.  Go XLB!!!!.  Note the morning surge of XLF and then refer back to yesterday’s last few bars on the Prognosticator, especially the disconnected LR 3 [...]

Dear Subscriber, Ranked volatility fell slightly today for the first time in weeks as price pushed up to challenge prior 2011 highs.  Interestingly, Consumer Discretionaries held the top slot among daily movers along with Utilities — odd bedmates, not to mention odd in light of yesterday's Consumer Confidence miss.  But it seems the market is [...]

I’ve been tackling swing strategies, or strategies that have an exit that isn’t the next day(s) like my usual ones. It’s not as easy. So far I’ve developed a few indicators along the way. Currently I’m looking into building a strategy that fades Standard Error Bands pierces, as opposed to the more popular Bollinger Bands.

The market has nearly recovered to bull run highs after a monster gap higher and on significant rotation back into Financials and Emerging Markets. As an educational point, it’s generally the case that larger magnitude gaps have a lower probability of back filling. At the mid-day, internals continue to look trend-day bullish, although price may [...]

Key performance indicators (KPI) play a crucial role in trading. KPIs guide us through the system development process and help us to take the right conclusions from a given backtest. A backtest is likely to produces a couple of hundred or even up to thousands of trades. The only way to evaluate the outcome is to look [...]

Dear Subscriber, Markets found perfect support at the rising five-day moving average led by Energy and Materials.  However, the powerful move also leaves us with another 'official' bearish signal for tomorrow.  Another factor to consider from a seasonal perspective, is that end-of-month performances have been serially weak over the last year or so.  My only [...]

If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.  A rather amazing lockstep day with XLF shown as the background focus ETF. The morning sell off was greatest with QQQ , SPY and XLB.  TLT and EEM held their own at the open and while TLT went downslope for the rest of the day, EEM held strong [...]

The market is showing no ill effects from weakness at the beginning of March. After a gap down and a small 5 point dip, the dip buyers woke up.  It looks as though we will erase the large drop earlier this month before it ends and, conveniently, before the quarter ends without any help from [...]

Price is finding resistance at R1, but this has been an impressive move precisely off the magenta five-day moving average (say SPY $130.50). This was also very near the fifty-day, reflecting a technical reflexive note to the move.

Dear Subscriber, The low volume rug pulled out from under price going into the closing bell profitably removed our short signal, leaving us with a neutral to slight positive bias for tomorrow.  However, since it remains unclear the precisely what the precipitating event was (possibly the nuclear plant meltdown news), I have to assume that [...]

We got our Monday pop within a dime to the 132 level on the SPY.  Two failures at the 132 level along with a QQQ rejection at Friday high of 57.22 are opening the door for some correction to take place.  The S&P 500 is still holding above its 50-day simple moving average on very [...]

Sometimes a wait and see strategy is the best trading policy and today’s negative action on DBC confirmed our previous suspicions about its divergent technical signals. DBC was downslope all day while XLB showed impressive strength early on before joining the pack in a retreat to the red. Leading the indices, DIA has the best technical [...]

Internals are otherwise suggestive of a range-day.