*** TA Update ***
The market technicals are slightly weighted to the positive for the intermediate term of 2 weeks to 2 months, on balance.
1) The market has absorbed bad news without testing or breaking its recent lows,
2) The Summation Index continues to rise, along with a slightly positive trend in the 10% component,
3) The weekly Summation continues to be positive in terms of its MACD:
stockcharts.com[m,a]waclyyay[pc30!c20][vc60][iud20!ua12,26,9]
4) The new lows has continued to decrease with each recent bottom, and the a/d lines continue to improve,
5) The volume on down days remains light,
6) The sentiment remains bearish, a good intermediate term contrarian indicator, not short term,
7) The VIX and VXN continue their downtrends, indicating less volatility and selling pressure,
8) The benchmark S&P500 continues to mark time but is holding in a range with a slight upward bias since the lows in Oct and Nov.
There are certainly negative signs as well, such as light volume on rally days as well as on down days, due in part to seasonality, so there is not strong institutional accumulation yet.
Leadership groups are few and there has not yet been strong leadership.
If tech stocks can gain relative strength, they could provide some leadership.
Or if financial stocks gain strength, they too could provide much needed leadership.
Usually, not always, one or both of these two sectors leads uptrend markets because the institutions favor them.
So some benchmark stocks to watch may be AAPL, RIMM and GOOG in the tech world while GS MS WFC in the financial arena could provide a harbinger of things to come.
In the commodities-related area, the ag/fert sector seems to be holding up relative to energy and gold stocks.
regards,
drbob |
