The U.S. equity market saw a wide swathe of indices break out this week. Perhaps the broadest and most important breakout was the Value Line Geometric Index (INDEXNYSEGIS:VALUG). Wednesday’s rally on Wall Street led not only to new highs again among the popular large cap indices, but also to breakouts…
In the midst of a decade-long “drought”, grain prices may finally be perking up… During the commodities boom 10 years ago, among the darlings among speculators were the grains. However, like any market that becomes the object of such investor exuberance, grain prices soon withered. They have spent the better…
Last fall, we laid out the foundation for the current rally in pharmaceutical and biotech stocks; we take stock of those setups and the sectors’ present prospects. Some may construe today’s post – and the associated charts of the day – as a victory lap. And while there may be…
A look at the Equal Weight S&P 500 has something for both the bulls and the bears. A hot, and much debated, topic of late in equity market circles is the issue of market breadth. As a refresher, breadth refers to the level of participation among all stocks in the…
The panic associated with the recent carnage in tech stocks and the Nasdaq 100 (INDEXNASDAQ:NDX) has begun to subside; but is it too soon to exhale? It is apparently tech week here in our blogs – and every other Financial news media site, as well – as the coverage is…
Volatility expectations took record jumps during Wednesday’s “big” selloff. Last Wednesday saw the stock market break out of its historically tight trading range – and it did so in dramatic fashion. After, for example, trading in a 16-day low-high range of barely 1%, the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) nearly doubled that…
Recent leader, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (INDEXNYSEGIS:EMX), is hitting a major confluence of resistance at the moment. One theme we’ve been all over in 2017 is the good relative performance of international markets. That includes emerging markets, individually and collectively, as measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EM)….
Amid geopolitical turmoil, the South Korean KOSPI just hit a new all-time high. If one was using news headlines in order to direct their investment decisions, South Korea would probably be one of the last options on their list. Given the tantrum currently being thrown in North Korea, intuition might…
A few weeks back, I noted a near-term challenge facing Germany’s major stock market index: The German DAX (INDEXDB:DAX). A furious 4-month, 20% rally had brought the index precisely to the level of its 2015 all-time highs just south of 12.400. How would the index react? As we noted in that…
Commercial hedgers have never had a larger net short position in silver futures. We talk about investor sentiment fairly often in these pages. Of course, sentiment analysis is well known for its “contrarian” nature, i.e., that “fading” the crowd often ends up being the correct move. What folks often get…