ETF Prophet

It was a weak end to an otherwise strong month, leaving the S&P 500 (SPY) down by -1.3% on the week,  but nearly +3.0% higher for the month of September.  Emerging Markets (EEM) logged a particularly impressive monthly performance.  Meanwhile, it’s certainly odd to see Value (PWV) and Healthcare (XLV) styles/ sectors sharing ten-month relative strength [...]

In spite of renewed worries over Spain by Friday, the S&P 500 (SPY) managed yet another higher close of about +0.8% on the week.  While there is a great deal to be legitimately concerned about across the globe, for now markets continue to climb the proverbial wall-of-worry.  On balance the major equity indices are technically [...]

Equities were finally able to follow through and break out of their multi-week range to the upside, leaving the S&P 500 (SPY) higher by another +1.3% on the week. Broad overbought conditions were taken out early in the week, lending support to the later continuation on the promise of a European/ Greece backstop. That said, [...]

Equities put in their worst week in months, leaving the S&P 500 (SPY) lower by -3.3% on the week. While the ‘right news’ could precipitate a violent upside reversal, in the absence of that I’d certainly expect lower lows ahead in the face of this strong downside momentum. Note in particular, how all but Technology [...]

With all the volatility and negative news flow, perhaps you’ll be as surprised as I was to see the S&P 500 (SPY) actually finished higher by +1.8% on the week.  Of course, over the last four weeks, the SPY remains down -5.9%.  Nevertheless, most US sector and style ETFs remain above their 10-month moving averages [...]

Week nineteen’s downtrend relentlessly carried forward this past week on heavy volume. It’s evident that de-risking/ re-pricing is underway, and long-term moving averages are being challenged. Indeed, the S&P 500 (SPY) fell a full -4.3%, breaking its 100- and 200-day EMA’s. Of course the SPY was eclipsed by another two points by the higher beta [...]

Two weeks ago my first “Sensitive Issues Scoring” model based on relative positioning of and among nine economically sensitive ETFs issued a first warning for equities. Last week, a fuller, more robust version driven by fifteen intermarket sector, style and country ETFs weighted for importance joined the party with its own warning signal as trading [...]

Two of my long-term risk models are now signaling market transition warnings for the weeks ahead — more on this in a follow-on post tomorrow (link). Meanwhile, for a week that sure “felt” volatile, looking back I still find it surprising that nearly all sectors, with the notable exception of the Apple (AAPL) driven Technology [...]

Last fall I spoke at an active money management conference, where I introduced about a half-a-dozen or more weekly inter-market ETF models designed to measure “risk acceptance” in equities. The subject of this post features one of the more basic models, which was partially inspired by the highly recommended “The Lawyer Trader” blog.

Last week’s slight overbought start precipitated a modest pullback, with the S&P 500 (SPY) finishing lower by -0.5%.  However, sector action was mixed.  Although Energy (XLE) fell back -3.4%, for instance, Consumer Discretionaries (XLY) still managed a bullish advance of +0.7%. Most areas of the market continue to look quite bullish.  My slight concern for [...]

Stock price action finally made the leap over 2011 highs to break the heavily watched S&P 500 1,400 level. In-fact, the SPY ETF finished higher by +2.4%. After an FOMC statement excluding mention of “QE3″, the bond complex and precious metals moved strongly downward, registering declines of (TLT) -3.9% and (DBP) -3.6%, respectively. As strong [...]

As promised Saturday this is the QQQ study using a simple RSI4 support/resistance trading system over the past 16 months.  Note that the setup inputs are revised to 20 and 88 to accommodate the more volatile nature of the Qs versus the SPY.  The system generates a few more trades than the SPY version and [...]

Building on this week’s post by Frank Hassler in which he defined a simple but elegant equity building strategy using weakness in the RSI2 to accumulate positions in SPY I ran additional RSI studies with the goal of identifying short term trading opportunities in SPY using a similar RSI support/resistance approach. And, whereas Frank used [...]

The holiday-shortened week offered a mixed performance among the major indices. While the S&P 500 (SPY) eked out a slight +0.1% gain with the Apple-driven NASDAQ 100 (QQQ) better still, the Russell 2000 (IWM) waned a significant -2.7%. I suspect these divergences could signal the end to equities lock-step advance. This isn’t to stay I’ve [...]

In conjunction with yesterday’s post this is the short side of the Mosaic 3 Finger setup, where Highest is replaced with Lowest and > is replaced with <.  Perhaps surprisingly, the Reverse model produced similar performance metrics to the Long side model. Given the positive momentum in the SPY since the 2009 crash you might [...]

After giving up some early gains, late day buying took us off the lows.  It was a rare reversal in 2012 but the point loss was small.   The small-caps and precious metals were pounded.  Tomorrow will be key to see if the bulls are losing momentum with new month money coming in.  Bears have to aggressively take out the mid 136 area on [...]

Testimony from the Bernanke has price off its highs, but you can see how strong that rising 5-day moving average support was for the SPY.  This was especially so as it coincided with the daily QQQ pivot.  It will be more interesting to see what happens at VWAP. Meanwhile, of course we have Apple up [...]

First..an update of Mosaic’s performance last week relative to SPY.  I’ve added a few metrics to help understand the differentials here along with a Max Drawdown value for each.  Last week was a chance for Mosaic to demonstrate its risk management attributes as the larger indices adopted a skittish behavior at the 13K mark.  Keep [...]