ETF Prophet

Global action by central banks and China ’s reduction in bank reserve ratio caught bears by surprise after the S&P bank downgrade after hour yesterday. The squeeze was on all day especially in the final 30 minutes of trading. What a difference 3 days make, after a gloomy Thanksgiving week. The S&P 500 is up [...]

Internals likewise retain trend-day status, although, as colleague Bill Luby points out, the VIX has remained curiously high relative to the move in price. Also of note, the subject at-risk sovereign bond yields have hardly budged….

A quick study for you the morning…

Not much to go by, but perhaps some caution is warranted intraday. I also looked out over the next few days. They appear to be a tossup.

It was a choppy day with S&P acting better but failed at the 50 day moving average. The NASDAQ and Russell struggled with oil,  commodities and retail leading. The better-than-expected consumer confidence numbers this morning helped. The S&P downgraded over 30 banks after hours and we are down about 5pts. Another day of consolidation tomorrow [...]

Large-cap tech is trading well below the broader S&P, that can’t hold forever.  Internals remain in range-day mode for the time being, however.

Here’s a few more details on the use of the TrendX indicator…shown here on the Qs….an index not known for easy technical analysis. Note the position of the vertical marker line on the chart at Oct. 7th…a date when the HLC Trend and the Detrend both cross the zero line to the upside.  This corresponds [...]

Traders seek to find the next BIG think ala Apple, Bidu and co. Often times this desire is founded by the underlying assumption that taking higher risk is rewarded with higher returns. Furthermore many traders believe in an efficient market where as one can outperform the market only by taking above average risk. However this hasn’t been [...]

The oversold bounce finally came with authority; backed up by some good news catalyst. There was no doubt this morning that the bulls came to play with better retail news and another potential Europe solution. Breadth was strong, but volume was light. If we could have some small side way chop in the next couple [...]

Being old and feeble I tend to be a myopic trader, focusing on just a few issues… and regular readers know GDX one of my core interests.  My early November post on GDX noted its penetration of resistance at $63 and since then its been in a relatively straight line free fall since then, losing [...]

Note support at $119.40, then at $118.80. Also, a nice large gap study by Rob Hanna — http://etfprophet.com/2-gaps-off-of-20-day-lows/

With SPY looking to gap up over 2.5% this morning below is a quick look at all other instances since 2003 when SPY gapped up over 2% immediately following a 20-day low.

Low number of instances, but the suggestion is obvious.  I would note, thoug…

Update Last week the portfolio saw a decrease in overall portfolio equity (-1.4%) due to severe weakness in major markets (SPY -4.6%). Fortunately TLT protected us somewhat from the overall market weakness. Furthermore some of the stocks (BIIB, ORLY, ALXN) showed resistance and didn’t sink with the overall market.  For the coming week two new [...]

After six straight day of losses, the sellers remained in charge and we closed weak again today.  We started off with a small  bounce after the weak open, but the downgrade of Belgium debt by S&P and Fitch in the last hour of trading took the wind out of any rally.  Europe seems to be [...]

Following up on the first post here from over two years ago, below is the current performance report for the Percent Exposure Donchian Channel system. I have made some improvements in my backtester to handle recording trades to better simulate how trad…

No bulls wanted to step in on one of the lightest volume days and risk Holiday surprises.  Last year we had Dubai , and this morning’s poor German bond auction reignited that fear.  We are again very oversold but as we have seen in August and 2008 they can become more oversold and Europe continues [...]

It appears the market is going to buck historical tendencies today and close down.  This will be the 11th time since 1960 that the SPX has closed lower on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  Below I have listed the other 10 instances along wi…