Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Friday morning. It’s Stephen Whiteside here from theuptrend.com. In the premarket this morning, stock index futures are higher across the board ahead of the employment numbers coming out at 8:30 this morning. Those numbers could certainly change the direction of the market. And the pre market commodities are flat at this particular time. Now, as we come into the market open, we’ve got Apple trading sharply higher. Now, Apple recently put in a lower high. We’re on a buy signal coming into Friday’s trading action. Right now, Apple is trading up over $180. And if you’ve got an order in at $181.25, it looks like it’s going to get filled at the open. Now, Apple is going to pop higher on earnings. It’s important to remember that a lot of stocks that have popped after earnings have faded fairly quickly. We can look at Alphabet, you can look at Tesla both pulling back out after they popped. And of course, that’s not good for the overall stock market if Apple does that again. Now, a couple of ARK stocks are in the news this morning. We’ve got Square or Block trading up over the upper channel line at the moment.
If it holds that, that would give us a daily buy signal. Then looking at Coinbase, it is down in the premarket this morning already on a sell signal. So not expecting a change in trend for Coinbase as it trades down to Wednesday’s low in the pre market. Now, ARK is currently on a buy signal, had an inside day yesterday. Looks a lot like the Nasdaq itself at the moment, looking to see if we can take out Monday’s high. Now the market can be a pretty noisy place. There’s a constant stream of news and economic numbers and then opinion on the news and economic numbers. And of course, the reaction to all that noise is price movement. In the stock market, we use charts to filter out that noise, and we use weekly charts to filter out what happens Monday to Friday and daily charts to help filter out what happens between 09:30 a.m. And 04:00 p.m. At the end of the day, it’s just a huge soap opera. And by using the charts, we can filter out all of that noise. Now, I printed off some weekly charts this morning just to see what things look like going into today’s trading action.
And for a lot of symbols, it’s been an inside week. For example, the Dow, which is only down 14 points on the week, pretty close to unchanged right now. And of course, Apple is helping lift the Dow higher this morning, and the Dow is currently up 300 points in the pre market ahead of those employment numbers. Yesterday was an inside day or a day of indecision for the Dow. Now, remember, the Dow is not the most important index in the world. It’s just the most followed index there is. It’s the oldest north american index. It’s the one, if you’re driving in your car and the news is going to mention the stock market, they’ll tell you what the Dow is doing. It’s really the comfort blanket for the stock market, but it is certainly not the most important index for the stock market. And I’ll show you that in a second. Now, the S&P 500 is down a little over two thirds, just on its way to down three quarters of a percent for the week. It did trade slightly above last week’s high at the open, but then has pulled back the rest of the week.
Now, when we talk about which index is the most important, it is the S&P 500. If we look at the ETF volume from yesterday, you can see for the S&P 500, it was over 62 million. For the Nasdaq 100, it was over 36 million. And then for the Dow, it was just over 3 million shares traded. So you can see where the market’s focus is. And I like to focus on the S&P 500. But when you’re dealing with the public, you’ve got to mention the Dow. Now, in the pre market this morning, the Dow is up a third of a percent. So that won’t take us up over this week’s high so far, but that could certainly change. Now, looking at what happened yesterday, we did make a lower low yesterday before pulling back into the channel. And what we’re looking for on Friday is a close above Monday’s high. That would be very positive for the market. That would get us back on a buy signal, but that’s, you know, you got to take what you can. If it closes above Monday’s high, that, that would be a very strong buy signal.
And so we’re going to wait and see how that works out. Now, looking at the Nasdaq 100, you can see we did trade above last week’s high before pulling back. We’re down 1% on the week right now. We’re up 0.87% in the pre market this morning. So we may be able to make up a lot of this week’s losses on Friday. Yesterday was an inside day for the Nasdaq. Again, we’re going to be watching to see if we can close above Monday’s high, that would be a very positive sign for the market. Looking at the TSX, we’re down two thirds of a percent on the week. Almost an inside week for the TSX. Certainly an inside day yesterday. And again, instead of this week’s high, we can look at the previous week’s high, which is acting as resistance, and we’ll see if we can break out and close above that number. That would certainly be positive for the market. Now, getting back to what happened yesterday, looking at the US market you can see it was information technology and then consumer discretionary that led the market higher. Not a lot of losers yesterday, just materials and healthcare, not down by much.
You can see the technology sector had an inside day yesterday. It was an inside day for consumer discretionary. Then we had an inside day for the real estate sector. And then communication services gave us an inside day. No change in trend there. We did see consumer staples trade up above the upper channel line. Once again, still on a buy signal here. No change in trend. What didn’t work? Well, it was materials, down just over half a percent on the day. No change in trend for materials. Then looking at what happened to the Canadian market, it was industrials, followed by utilities, real estate, consumer staples and then energy. What didn’t work? Well? Healthcare. And of course healthcare means the marijuana stocks. Industrials were up yesterday. No change in trend there. No change in trend for utilities. Making a new high for this move. No change in trend for real estate. Up on the day. No change in trend for consumer staples. Still on a buy signal here. No change in trend for the energy sector. Having an inside day on Thursday. Still on a sell signal. And then let’s close off with the energy sector. It had an inside day on Thursday, so small gains on the day, not enough to change any trend.
Okay, that’s all for this morning’s presentation. Trying to get this presentation out before those employment numbers come out and they could certainly change the direction of the market. Apple is certainly putting in a bid into the market. Apple is in the Dow 30, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. So it’s certainly helping all of the major indices move higher on Friday. Unfortunately, commodities are flat so that’s not going to really help the canadian market coming into Friday’s trading action. Enjoy your day. Enjoy your weekend. Next time you’ll hear my voice is on Monday morning.
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Stephen Whiteside
TheUpTrend.com
Friday, May 3, 2024
