An early rally faded on Friday, but that selling was met with a late afternoon rally that took the indices closer to even, and in the case of the Nasdaq and small caps, pushed up for moderate gains. The Dow lost 22-points and the S&P 500 and Transportation Index were flat.
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I think I have exhausted the monthly and holiday seasonality analysis, but in case you were on vacation last week... one more time. Traders tend to take the last week of the summer off (before Labor Day) and most bears are traders while investors keep buying because of pensions and 401K plans that deposit their funds into the market all the time. Now that the holiday is over, trading volume should pick up, but not right away. It usually takes 2 or 3 days to see things getting back to normal.
Historically September is the worst performing month of the year, but August is a close second and it did just fine, and that's one reason we don't usually use seasonality as a primary indicator. It's just a helpful tool except around a couple of the major holidays, and Labor Day may be one of them.
Chart provided courtesy of www.sentimentrader.com
The futures look to be leaning on the bullish side on Sunday evening. Last year post-Labor Day weekend triggered a big rally that lasted into the end of the year. Can it happen again?
I spent my holiday weekend fixing technical issues on the website, and am I burned out! I'm now 55 years old and my wife has already retired and if I didn't enjoy analyzing the stock market so much, I might be thinking of walking away from doing this. But I do enjoy it so I have to put up with the technical part of the job. My webhosting company is great and goes beyond their job duties helping me out when needed, otherwise the site might be a mess.
Right now we have some users who can't view certain pages, or login to certain features of the site. It all looks pretty good on my end so it's tough to debug. It is likely device and security settings on the browsers we use that make it different for many of us.
I posted this in the forum, but I'll repeat it here. If you do get some kind of warning message about the site's security certificate, and it gives you options such as, "Continue to this website (not recommended)", you will be safe clicking that. It says not recommended because they don't know who we are. We do have a secure server and we are not hackers stealing your info. There's nothing malicious on our site.
One thing you might try if some pages are still coming up blank or with warnings is to clear your browser's history and the cache and restart the browser. You can Google instructions fairly easily. It may help. Thanks for your patience and your help while we continue to work on this!
The S&P 500 / C-fund was flat on Friday but technically it did fall below a couple of levels of support. Being the day before a holiday it's not a great indicator of anything, and we'll likely know more in a day or two. Stocks seem to want to go higher but there is an open gap down by 2875 which, if filled, will give investors a little something to think about. The question will be if they will be willing to buy a dip that quickly again after barely pausing for the last 3 weeks.
The small caps (S-fund) have been doing quite well and are in a major rising channel, but if we want to be picky we see that it is a lot closer to the top of the channel than the bottom so there's little room for error at this point.
The Dow Transportation Index has been hot over the last two months as well, but like the S&P 500 there was a little hiccup on Friday as it fell below the rising support line.
The EAFE (I-fund) was hit hard on Friday after a solid two-week rally pushed it up to the 50 and 200-day moving averages. It is at the mercy of the dollar, which rallied on Friday.
Here is the chart of the dollar and it is trying to hold at the 50-day EMA after its sharp pre-holiday pullback. A lot of these moves are based on the trade negotiations which have been going back and forth lately.
The AGG (bonds) has been doing just fine of late but the longer-term chart suggests there could be some issues going forward. That's a large bearish rising wedge pattern that I would suspect will eventually break down.
It's that time of year again... time for the annual Last Man Standing NFL Contest. It's free.
More Information: Last Man Standing Contest
Last Man Standing 2018
Read more in today's TSP Talk Plus Report. We post more charts, indicators and analysis, plus discuss the allocations of the TSP and ETF Systems. For more information on how to gain access and a list of the benefits of being a subscriber, please go to: www.tsptalk.com/plus.php
Thanks for reading. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
Tom Crowley
Posted daily at www.tsptalk.com/comments.php
The legal stuff: This information is for educational purposes only! This is not advice or a recommendation. We do not give investment advice. Do not act on this data. Do not buy, sell or trade the funds mentioned herein based on this information. We may trade these funds differently than discussed above. We use additional methods and strategies to determine fund positions.
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[TR]
[TD="align: center"] Daily TSP Funds Return
[TR]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[/TD]
[TD]
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
I think I have exhausted the monthly and holiday seasonality analysis, but in case you were on vacation last week... one more time. Traders tend to take the last week of the summer off (before Labor Day) and most bears are traders while investors keep buying because of pensions and 401K plans that deposit their funds into the market all the time. Now that the holiday is over, trading volume should pick up, but not right away. It usually takes 2 or 3 days to see things getting back to normal.
Historically September is the worst performing month of the year, but August is a close second and it did just fine, and that's one reason we don't usually use seasonality as a primary indicator. It's just a helpful tool except around a couple of the major holidays, and Labor Day may be one of them.
Chart provided courtesy of www.sentimentrader.com
The futures look to be leaning on the bullish side on Sunday evening. Last year post-Labor Day weekend triggered a big rally that lasted into the end of the year. Can it happen again?
I spent my holiday weekend fixing technical issues on the website, and am I burned out! I'm now 55 years old and my wife has already retired and if I didn't enjoy analyzing the stock market so much, I might be thinking of walking away from doing this. But I do enjoy it so I have to put up with the technical part of the job. My webhosting company is great and goes beyond their job duties helping me out when needed, otherwise the site might be a mess.
Right now we have some users who can't view certain pages, or login to certain features of the site. It all looks pretty good on my end so it's tough to debug. It is likely device and security settings on the browsers we use that make it different for many of us.
I posted this in the forum, but I'll repeat it here. If you do get some kind of warning message about the site's security certificate, and it gives you options such as, "Continue to this website (not recommended)", you will be safe clicking that. It says not recommended because they don't know who we are. We do have a secure server and we are not hackers stealing your info. There's nothing malicious on our site.
One thing you might try if some pages are still coming up blank or with warnings is to clear your browser's history and the cache and restart the browser. You can Google instructions fairly easily. It may help. Thanks for your patience and your help while we continue to work on this!
The S&P 500 / C-fund was flat on Friday but technically it did fall below a couple of levels of support. Being the day before a holiday it's not a great indicator of anything, and we'll likely know more in a day or two. Stocks seem to want to go higher but there is an open gap down by 2875 which, if filled, will give investors a little something to think about. The question will be if they will be willing to buy a dip that quickly again after barely pausing for the last 3 weeks.
The small caps (S-fund) have been doing quite well and are in a major rising channel, but if we want to be picky we see that it is a lot closer to the top of the channel than the bottom so there's little room for error at this point.
The Dow Transportation Index has been hot over the last two months as well, but like the S&P 500 there was a little hiccup on Friday as it fell below the rising support line.
The EAFE (I-fund) was hit hard on Friday after a solid two-week rally pushed it up to the 50 and 200-day moving averages. It is at the mercy of the dollar, which rallied on Friday.
Here is the chart of the dollar and it is trying to hold at the 50-day EMA after its sharp pre-holiday pullback. A lot of these moves are based on the trade negotiations which have been going back and forth lately.
The AGG (bonds) has been doing just fine of late but the longer-term chart suggests there could be some issues going forward. That's a large bearish rising wedge pattern that I would suspect will eventually break down.
It's that time of year again... time for the annual Last Man Standing NFL Contest. It's free.
More Information: Last Man Standing Contest
Last Man Standing 2018
Read more in today's TSP Talk Plus Report. We post more charts, indicators and analysis, plus discuss the allocations of the TSP and ETF Systems. For more information on how to gain access and a list of the benefits of being a subscriber, please go to: www.tsptalk.com/plus.php
Thanks for reading. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
Tom Crowley
Posted daily at www.tsptalk.com/comments.php
The legal stuff: This information is for educational purposes only! This is not advice or a recommendation. We do not give investment advice. Do not act on this data. Do not buy, sell or trade the funds mentioned herein based on this information. We may trade these funds differently than discussed above. We use additional methods and strategies to determine fund positions.
