Investors Still Shaky On International Concerns; A Big Day For Chipotle

Ulli Market Commentary Contact

Mon pic

[Chart courtesy of MarketWatch.com]

1. Moving the Markets

Markets recovered from a steep drop early on during the trading day, but were unable to climb back up to break even by the closing bell as the chart above shows. The day’s losses were pretty broad, with nine of the 10 primary S&P 500 sector indexes ending in negative territory.

The buzz around most media outlets is that investors remain a bit concerned about numerous international conflicts, especially in Ukraine and the Middle East. Fighting continued between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas as the death toll from the Israeli offensive in Gaza grew.

Chipotle (CMG) made headlines today with its Q2 earnings announcement. Shares of the Mexican restaurant chain surged more than 9% in after-hours trading on Monday, up $54.57 to $644.85, upon the news that its second quarter same-store sales jumped 17.3% for the second quarter of 2014 compared to the second quarter of 2013.

Despite the international conflicts, investors should remain focused on upcoming U.S. corporate earnings. Results from Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Coca Cola (KO) are due out Tuesday and Caterpillar (CAT) on Thursday.

Our 10 ETFs in the Spotlight did not show much enthusiasm as the major indexes attempted to recoup early losses.

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.

Here are the 10 candidates:

MaxDD

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:

YTD

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) dipped from last Friday’s close:

Domestic TTI: +2.73% (last close +2.90%)

International TTI: +3.06% (last close +3.35%)

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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