Chinese stocks have been on fire! From an intra-day low of 36.62 on June 24, FXI (iShares Trust FTSE-Xinhua China 25 Index Fund) shot up nearly 13 percent to 41.30 in a little over a month (by July 29, to … Continued
How equity traders are likely to position themselves for at least the next week or so will depend on how they answer the question above. As the accompanying chart shows, going back at least two and a half years, a … Continued
One consistent theme the last several weeks on this blog has been that of divergence. In a healthy market, things tend to – or are supposed to – move in unison. Simplistically, let us say a widget is in production. … Continued
Yesterday was the first time since April the S&P 500 Index violated its 50-day moving average – both simple and exponential. This was the first test since May, yet there was hardly any resistance from the bulls. Sellers simply overwhelmed … Continued
Non-residential fixed investment contributed 0.68 percent to the four-percent growth in U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter. A much larger 1.69 percent came from personal consumption expenditures. Back in 1Q08, non-residential fixed investment peaked at $1.99tn, preceded by … Continued
NYSE margin debt shot back up in June, surging 5.9 percent month-over-month to $464.3bn, just a touch below February’s all-time high of $465.7bn. This follows a down March and April and flattish May. In recent months, action on the Nasdaq … Continued
The Chicago Board Options Exchange has been publishing values for the CBOE S&P 500 Skew Index since February 2011. The index seeks to measure the perceived risk of extreme negative moves in U.S. equity markets – the so-called tail risk. … Continued
There was an article on MarketWatch.com on Friday entitled “Why lagging small caps might not bring down the S&P 500.” The title says it all. The story seeks to justify why prevailing weakness in U.S. small-caps is not a cause … Continued
Newsletter writers continue to defy gravity, yet have so far been on the right side of trade. The latest edition of the Investors Intelligence survey shows bulls at 56.5 percent, essentially unchanged week-over-week. Except for three weeks in February in … Continued
Depending on how mature an economic cycle is, different sectors, and industries within them, act differently. Some lead, some lag, yet others are coincident. Investors gravitate toward sectors such as technology and consumer discretionary when they are more optimistic and … Continued