With the talk of the Financial Crisis getting more attention in the media, let’s look at the long-term chart of the S&P Financial Sector and the XLF (AMEX Sector SPDR). S&P Financial Monthly Index: XLF ETF: What we’re seeing is a massive collapse in share prices and trend. Price has now made new monthly lows…
If you’ve been caught in the day-to-day activities of your trading, take a moment now and look at the larger picture of the primary (or broader) trend of the major US Stock Market Indexes – the S&P 500 chart looks eerily similar to the beginning of the 2000-2001 decline. Let’s look quickly at the Fibonacci…
We have all heard the headline reports about energy prices skyrocketing in 2008, but what have the other commodities been doing in terms of percentage returns? Let’s take a quick look at Agriculture, Metals, Energy, Livestock, and the CRB Index for their standing now that half of the year has passed. Commodity Percentage returns so…
As mentioned previously, Gold prices broke out of a triangle consolidation pattern and now appear headed to their price projection target of $1,000 per ounce. Let’s see how this is possible. First, gold prices have clearly entered a consolidation pattern, no matter how you draw the trendlines. Price swings are overlapping and truncating at closer…
Friday’s action was important, in that breadth declined to new lows for the year, which certainly isn’t good news for the bullish camp. Let’s look at a few charts and different perspectives on what this might mean. First, the weekly chart of the NYSE New Highs minus New Lows overlaid against the backdrop of the…
Dr. Steenbarger detailed the notion of the “Small Edge” in his recent post “Small Edges, Consistent Returns.” In the post, Dr. Brett runs a variety of scenarios through Henry Carstens’ P&L Forecaster to compare results across having an edge (or lack thereof) of a couple of percent, or having a win/loss ratio of .9, 1.0,…
The “talk of the town” this morning is the massive overnight plunge and devastating losses in 2008 for government chartered mortagage companies Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNA). Also, Federal National Mortgage (FNM) has shown a very similar pattern. Let’s look at Freddie Mac (FRE) Monthly: What’s curious about this chart is the absolute…
We expect mutual funds to perform roughly in line with the respective average – actually, we expect mutual funds to beat their average because we pay management fees to the fund managers. What happens when a given fund grossly underperforms its benchmark? The famous Legg Mason Value Trust (ticker: LMVTX) is such a fund that…
Today’s intraday action, like yesterday, was quite interesting and relatively difficult to trade successfully intraday. Let’s look at the Dow Jones structure intraday and how it factors into the potential ’rounded reversal’ pattern on the hourly chart. DIA 5-minute: Price began with an upside gap – such gaps can occur after a strong close or…
Today, the US Stock Market may be in the process of completing a ’rounded reversal’ or ’rounded intraday bottom’ before heading higher in a couter-swing back up, which will work off the ‘oversold’ technical condition we’re in. Let’s look at the charts to see what’s happening. DIA (Dow Jones ETF) 30 minute chart: I may…