Thursday, April 23, 2009

Today's Markets

A note on yesterday's charts: I was out for the afternoon. When I got back to the office I forgot to refill the background on several charts before I saved them for the blog. Sometimes things get moving a bit too fast.

With all of the charts below note the bullish alignment of all the SMAs -- the shorter SMAs are above the longer SMAs and in most cases the SMAs are moving higher. However, also notice that all the averages have broken the upward sloping trend lines and in some cases are grappling with trying to maintain their position.

In the case of the SPYs and DIA, notice that prices are started to form a downward sloping consolidation pattern or bull market sell-off. Both look as though they are ready to "roll over" -- start to move lower at a considerably faster pace.

While there is still plenty of support from current levels, the news overall does not support a strong and sustained rally. Consider these two charts from the economic news releases today:





While the headlines implied these were good numbers, I just don't see it. Unemployment ticked up and existing home sales are still at low levels. It's way too early with both of these data series to tell whether or not they have topped/bottomed out; we just don't have enough data. An argument could be made that maybe existing homes sales have bottomed. But you could have made that argument over all of last year and you would have been wrong.