1. Moving The Markets
It was a roller coaster ride but, in the end, the major indexes managed to stage a turnaround, with the S&P 500 closing at a record level for the 21st time this year.
The afternoon rally may have been a delayed response to Janet Yellen’s statement in which she confirmed rates to remain low for the forseeable future as the labor market is far from firing on all cylinders. Due to that slack, economic numbers will have to show some considerable improvement in order to justify a change in interest rate policy.
Today’s econ reports were well received with the weekly jobless claims dropping while layoffs were at very low levels. The Phili Fed manufacturing index surprised many analysts by jumping to its best reading since September.
In the commodity world, Brent crude surpassed $115 a barrel for the first time in 9 months and gold came alive, rallied sharply and closed above the 1,300 level.
Our ETFs in the Spotlight rallied with 8 of them making new highs; 9 of them are currently on the plus side YTD with only XLY lagging as it has all year.
2. ETFs in the Spotlight
In case you missed the announcement and description of this section, you can read it here again.
It features 10 broadly diversified ETFs from my HighVolume list as posted every Monday. Furthermore, they are screened for the lowest MaxDD% number meaning they have been showing better resistance to temporary sell offs than all others over the past year.
In other words, none of them ever triggered their 7.5% sell stop level during this time period, which included a variety of severe market pullbacks but no move into outright bear market territory.
Here are the 10 candidates:
All of them are in “buy” mode, meaning their prices are above their respective long term trend lines by the percentage indicated (%M/A).
Year to date, here’s how the above candidates have fared so far:
To be clear, the first table above shows the position of the various ETFs in relation to their respective long term trend lines (%M/A), while the second one tracks their trailing sell stops in the “Off High” column. The “Action” column will signal a “Sell” once the -7.5% point is taken out in the “Off High” column.
3. Domestic Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs)
Our Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) inched higher and closed as follows:
Domestic TTI: +3.80% (last close +3.73%)
International TTI: +4.87% (last close +4.70%)
Disclosure: I am obliged to inform you that I, as well as advisory clients of mine, own some of these listed ETFs. Furthermore, they do not represent a specific investment recommendation for you, they merely show which ETFs from the universe I track are falling within the guidelines specified.
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