Hello, everyone, and welcome to Thursday morning. It’s Stephen Whiteside here from theuptrend.com. In the pre market this morning, stock index futures and commodities are currently trading above fair value. Now, so far this week, the market responded positively to PPI numbers on Tuesday, CPI numbers on Wednesday, and let’s see if they can do it again on Thursday, with initial jobless claims and retail sales coming out at 8:30 this morning. Now, over the past couple of days, we’ve had the VIX back on a sell signal that’s supported for higher stock prices.
No major changes in the world of currencies. A new high for the euro yesterday. The us dollar index closed up slightly on the day. No change there. No major change for the japanese yen.
Bond prices continued to move higher on Wednesday. We saw the TLT and the XBB both trade higher. So we know bond traders are fairly happy right now. The Dow finally caught up with the S&P 500, the TSX and the Nasdaq 100 generating a buy signal. On Wednesday.
We saw American Express come back with a buy signal. We’ve got travelers, we’ve got United healthcare, and we’ve got Verizon all back on buy signals as of Wednesday’s close. Now, what didn’t work yesterday was Walmart, but Walmart’s out with earnings this morning and it is trading higher in the pre market. So it could end the day on a buy signal that would be positive for the market. And you can see Walmart hasn’t pulled back that much.
Now compare how Walmart looks to some of the knuckle draggers in the Dow 30. So we’ve got a wide range of stocks here in the Dow that are not participating in the rally. That includes Boeing, Cisco, which is not participating in the rally, but may, starting today, it’s out with earnings, it’s cutting jobs, blah, blah, blah. It’s trading higher in the pre market this morning and could end the day on a buy signal. No joy for Chevron, no joy for Disney.
Still watching Honeywell trading below the lower channel line. That’s also true for intel. And there we’ve got Merck at the lower channel line, but no change in trend. Now, if you’re going to watch the US market, of course you want to watch the S&P 500. It traded slightly higher yesterday, just up a third of a percent on the day.
Volumes are light right now. You would expect that in the month of August. A lot of people are talking about the fact that the volumes on the way up are much lower than the volumes on the way down. That is true, but the reality is we are on buy signals right now and the volume may pick up later. It may never pick up.
It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, the market is where it is and if it’s on light volume or heavy volume, it doesn’t really matter. The Nasdaq was up slightly on the day. On Wednesday we saw semiconductors looking at the SMH up slightly on the day. So no major changes there.
Now the rest of the market not doing so well again, the Russell 2000 was actually down nearly two thirds of a percent on Wednesday. Now what worked yesterday? Well, it was financials, and financials popped yesterday and you would think it would have something to do with bank stocks or regional banks. They did not participate yesterday. Both of those were down on the day.
It was more about insurance companies and broker dealers. The financial sector was led higher yesterday by progressive and allstate with Charles Schwab coming in third on the performance list. And there it had a nice pop. It is back on a buy signal as of Wednesday’s close. Looking at the Canadian market, it continued to move higher on Wednesday, being led higher by Infotech.
And of course Shopify has a lot to do with that. But we’ve got converge back on a buy signal as of Wednesday’s close. Still waiting for BlackBerry to close above 3.15. Still waiting for Bit Farms to close above $3.30. Then we’ve got Celestica on its second day of a buy signal.
No joy for Hut 8 on Wednesday. Then we’ve got Lightspeed trading up to the upper channel line two days in a row. And that nice open gap there looking for a close on Thursday above $17.91 there we’ve got Open Text. Second day of a buy signal for Open Text. I guess we’re going to move back up to the 43.75 level level.
Then we’ve got Shopify continuing to move higher and it looks like it might be heading for $100 and then possibly filling that open gap. Last up this morning looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum. No joy here. Still on sell signals, no change in trend. Okay, folks, that’s all for this morning’s presentation.
So far it looks like the market wants to do some buying at the open. But again, we’ve got retail sales and jobless claims coming out at 8:30. Those numbers could certainly change the direction of the market. Enjoy the rest of your day. Next time you’ll hear my voice is on Friday morning.
Stephen Whiteside
TheUpTrend.com
Thursday, August 15, 2024
