Hey Market Pilot,Last week, I wrote a piece about the S&P 500 (SPY) fading below the daily 50 simple moving average (SMA). In that article, I cautioned about shorting the market because I didn’t know how many opportunities there might be. Turns out there was a nice drop, but you either had to be in the day before or trade it the day of because it didn’t even last an entire market session. The SPY tapped the weekly 21 exponential moving average (EMA) on this past Monday and that was … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes were released along with Jerome Powell fielding questions. Pretty much everything stayed the same, but they are conditioning the market to expect tapering, someday. Perhaps they would have been a little tougher on the taper talk if it weren’t for the Evergrande event. So they came in with another wait-and-see position. We know that tapering will have to happen at some point, but will the market implode on the news? I think tapering as the catalyst for the start of … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, Last week, we continued to see the market drift lower as it had been heavy all week. It started when the S&P 500 (SPY) could not hold the daily 21 exponential moving average (EMA) as support, so then it was onto the daily 50 simple moving average (SMA) where it got about one day’s worth of support. The bounce of price at that level was then met by overhead resistance with the hourly 50 SMA. Then Friday, on Quad Witching, the markets sold off all day and … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, I think most of us know that even though insider trading is illegal it still probably happens. Mostly because in order to have deals done, somebody knows something and there are people who want to be able to take advantage of the deal. I don’t think there is the ability to enforce who knows what, at what time, for every situation. We also know that there are big players out there who can move the market and push price around to grab liquidity for their advantage. Yesterday … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, This weekend was the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on our country. I like to take a moment and appreciate and recognize those who worked hard to help save as many lives as they could and those who lost their lives in that tragedy. I know it seems like there is a lot of divisiveness and uneasiness in our country and politics right now, but we can think back to 20 years ago when a tragedy like that helped us to realize maybe not … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, The market has a few sayings that help give some guidance as to its seasonality and behavior. Arguably, the most commonly known ones are “sell in May and go away,” “buy the rumor, sell the news,” and “don’t short a quiet market.” But the one that pertains to this week which might be a little lesser-known is “sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur.” Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Jewish New Year, started this week. This means that those in the Jewish religion who also participate in … Read more

Hey Market Pilots, Today is Labor Day and the stock market is closed which means we get to enjoy a three-day weekend to refresh and regroup. Labor Day weekend is a time to remember the American workforce which has had its trials and tribulations over more than a century as it has made a lot of progress for the well-being of workers going into the future. Where we are today and the benefits that we get to enjoy came as a result of the hard work that generations before us … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, I have been discussing recently how the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ have been trending up relentlessly, but underneath the surface the breadth was poor and many stocks were declining. The indexes I have been using to help demonstrate that poor breadth have been the Russell 2000 and the IBD 50 (FFTY) since they were basically going sideways for the last six months. Now that those two indexes are starting to move up and provide energy for the small caps, along with the market more broadly, let’s … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, Last week was the Jackson Hole symposium where we heard another speech from Jerome Powell who is the 16th chair of the Federal Reserve. It was pretty much assumed that he wasn’t going to rock the boat or change course, but would the market be happy with the status quo?  The market pulled back slightly on Thursday going into Friday’s speech. While that might have been taken as people hesitating or pulling bids before the news, in the Moxie Indicator™ world I had been guiding the members … Read more

Hey Market Pilot, Over the past several months, part of the talk about the market has been the poor market breadth (number of stocks participating in a move) despite the record high in the indexes. One theory I had floated across was that if the indexes stayed up, and breadth cycled down, what would happen if all those poorly performing stocks making up the poor breadth spent enough time trending down, that these tickers eventually became good deals and started to strengthen? This is just an idea of mine on … Read more