Skip to main content

Weekly Market Update - Mostly More of the Same

Weekly Market Call

Earnings continued this week as they did last week: decent numbers coupled with down-beat outlooks for coming quarters. Over 60% of the S&P 500 have reported by now so we can say we know the tone of this quarter's earnings season: so-so though it looks like aggregate earnings might just barely cross into double digits.

Other events of interest included a rise in oil prices and the Fed Open Market Committee meeting. The closely watched Fed statement was essentially the same as the last one and, as expected, they held rates steady.

Economic news was mixed with fourth quarter GDP being revised upwards to 3.5% and January employment data caming in lower than expected. This last was offset by an upward revision for December. Reported wage gains were modest, thus providing a case for lower inflation.

Economically speaking, it appears that we are on track for a soft landing with growth continuing amid modest inflation. Based on earnings season, however, a contrarion case can be made for slowing growth. The percentage of companies beating expectations is lower than has been typical in recent quarters and, more noteworthy, forecasts for first quarter aggregate earnings are much lower than usual.

The Dow and S&P 500 continued plowing upward this week. The NASDAQ 100 (as tracked by QQQQ), however, appears to be trying to get going but rose only a bit this week (1.7%) on lackluster volume. The TradeRadar SELL signal that I was reluctant to embrace last week has continued to flash and I am considering that two weeks in a row is confirmation that the NAZ will be under pressure and likely to drop over the next few weeks. The star of the week was the Russell 2000 which gained 2.7%

ETF Comments

This week, interestingly, the technology ETF that I track, XLK, has stopped correlating so closely with the NASDAQ 100. Though not a screaming buy, XLK is clearly not flashing a SELL signal in the same way QQQQ is.

XLE, the energy ETF reflects this week's rise in oil and is continuing an up-trend that began around January 16. In a previous post I made the point that it will probably bounce up off its 200-day moving average and so it has. If the cold weather persists, we could see a new high very soon.

The housing market showed some firming this week so XHB, the homebuilders ETF, caught an enthusiastic bid. IYR, the real estate ETF, rose but did not gain quite as much in percentage terms as XHB. This chart has been very interesting for a while now and has quietly moved up 30% since its lows back in July/August/September of last year. This might be a trend to jump on as it now looks as if it won't be going lower from here.

TradeRadar Stock Picks

Not much movement in Generex (GNBT). Tarragon (TARR) moved up in concert with XHB. Its chart very much resembles that of XHB, as a matter of fact. PacifiNet (PACT) moved up a bit though it is off its highs for the week. The new addition to the list is QID, the ProShares UltraShort QQQ, a leveraged ETF that moves inversely to the NASDAQ 100. This was purchased in reaction to the TradeRadar SELL signal on the Q (read the post describing the TradeRadar Pick o' the Month).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation

Thursday Bounce: Trend Busters, Swing Signals and Trend Leaders for July 9, 2009

This is a quick post to announce that we have published Thursday's Trend Leaders, Swing Signals and Trend Busters at Alert HQ . All are based on daily data. Today we have the following: 72 Swing Signals -- A couple of days ago we had 35 signals, today we have twice as many. Happily, we now have 65 BUY signals, a mere 4 SELL Signals plus 3 Strong BUYs. Whoo-hoo! 56 Trend Leaders , all in strong up-trends according to Aroon, MACD and DMI. There are 18 new stocks that made today's list and 60 that fell off Tuesday's list. 48 Trend Busters of which 5 are BUY signals and 43 are SELL signals The view from Alert HQ -- Talk about mixed signals. If you look at our Swing Signals list you would think the market was in the middle of a big bounce. BUY signals are swamping the SELL signals and we even have a few Strong BUYs. Yes, there's a good sprinkling of tech stocks and tech ETFs but the distribution is pretty broad-based with a good number of different sectors represented, eve

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional