- This week is a very heavy week for the release of domestic macroeconomic data. On Tuesday, we'll see December PPI, followed by December CPI on Wednesday. December Retail Sales will cross the tape on Thursday, followed by December Housing Starts and December Industrial Production on Friday.
- Right now, the Fed's public speaking docket is fairly light this week. That could evolve as the week progresses and as the Fed's media blackout period ahead of their January 29th policy deci...

Readers will note that the S&P 500 had developed a head & shoulders pattern, which is a pattern of bearish reversal, that stretches from very late October into 2025. The pattern displays a neckline at 5,827, which would be our downside pivot. Readers may notice that this neckline runs almost even with what would be a 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the rally that ran from the August low through the December high, making this level all that much more significant as it has alre...

Good question. Aside from the all-week technology shindig in Vegas, this is December Jobs Week. While markets will take a day off to observe the National Day of Mourning for President Carter on Thursday, and that will move the weekly data on jobless claims up to Wednesday, the release of the two BLS surveys remains unimpacted on Friday morning. Right now, I am looking for Non-Farm Payroll growth of 152K seasonally adjusted jobs with participation rising, unemployment staying put at ...

So, we see that the December 20th low for the S&P 500 was taken out on January 2nd. That technically ended the "up" trend that traders had tried to play going into the above-mentioned Santa Rally. Now, the question becomes... Did Friday create a new Day One in search of an upside confirmation? While certainly better than a sharp stick in the eye, not really, or not yet.
While aggregate trading volume was fractionally higher across the S&P 500 on Friday from Thursday, i...

According to a note published by UBS, which I read about in a piece written by Monica L. Correa at Seeking Alpha, the Big Six, Not the Mag Seven really boosted overall US stock market performance by themselves in 2024 and going back to the market lows of 2022. The Big Six would include mega-cap names Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft (MSFT) and Nvidia (NVDA), but leaves out Tesla (TSLA) which is a member of the Mag 7 and Netflix (NFL...

On Thursday, after opening higher, and then getting kidney punched, the S&P 500 gave up 0.22% and the Nasdaq Composite gave back 0.16%. Meh. Treasury prices did not move all that mush and really haven't this week. What did move was the US Dollar Index, as a string of European macroeconomic data-points printed in a state of contraction. Crude oil spiked on Thursday as well, which is really something because a US Dollar Index that spiked above the 109 level should have had a d...

Readers may note that the stock's daily MACD has just gone bearish. This happened in very early November as well and that was clearly an opportunity to get long or get longer. Relative strength is stronger than neutral as the stock wobbles into the end of the year.
There is some profit taking going on in this environment, which is a natural byproduct of having had a great year. The trend is still upward sloping and nowhere near cracking. If there should indeed be a...

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model for the fourth quarter is running at growth of 3.1% (q/q, SAAR). The model has not been updated since Christmas Eve but will be revised this Thursday on the first business day of the year. Atlanta, however, is something of an outlier among its peers. Among other regional Fed districts modeling Q4 GDP in real-time, New York is at growth of 1.86%, Cleveland is at growth of 1.85% and St Louis is at growth of 1.27%.
Currently, Fed Funds F...

The Santa Claus Rally isn't quite dead. At least not yet. Check out these charts...
Readers will see that while the S&P 500 closed out the week on a two-day losing streak, but that the last sale remained well above the lows of the Friday prior to last Friday. That was where the index experienced its upward change of trend on greatly increased trading volume. The daily MACD is still postured quite bearishly, but we'll see this week, just how key that support...