The good news is: The Nasdaq composite (OTC) closed at an all time high last Friday. The sellers left town early last week. Volume disappeared, new lows disappeared and the secondaries outperformed the blue chips. The Negatives The market is overbought. The first chart covers the past 6 months showing the OTC in blue and a 10% trend (19 day EMA) of Nasdaq new highs (OTC NH) in green. Dashed vertical lines have been drawn on the 1st trading day of each month. New highs picked up last week, but the indicator is a long way from confirming the new index high. The next chart is similar to the one above except it shows the S&P 500 (SPX) in re...
Starting this weekend I will start giving you an overview of three or four dividend stocks worth looking at…reasons can be a recent dividend increase, a bad performance in the stock price etc. Please do not interpret that as a recommendation of buying those stocks. It should only give you a hint there are stocks out there which are not overpriced. Also I do not include any deeper analysis of the stocks; I will just give you quick overview which dividend stocks currently look attractive. Today, I will have a quick look at the following four stocks: Altria Group IBM General Mills Qualcomm Please be aware that all of the stocks mentioned...
VIX retraced 86% of its rally, closing beneath its Intermediate-term support at 10.93. It is temporarily off its weekly buy signal. Confirmation comes above that level and the subsequent move may be very fast. Ending Diagonal patterns are known to completely retrace themselves, once broken. Could the initial foray have broken the trendline already? (Forbes) Volatility, volatility, volatility. Market participants who are looking for volatility to find trading opportunities might have something to look forward to. Generally, most of the historical market crashes have been preceded by a decrease in volatility and often referred to as the cal...
Over the years, Mexico, one of the biggest producers of petroleum and other liquids globally, has transitioned from being a net energy exporter to a net importer of energy. What Led to the Change? The import dependence was a result of the steady decrease in oil production that started in 2005. To address the situation, in August 2014, the government decided to deregulate its energy industry and end the 75-year monopoly of Pemex. The ministry of energy in the country, SENER, issued a five year, four round tender plans from 2015 to 2019. The deregulation was aimed to help the Mexican oil industry become more efficient and draw more investments...
Fundamental Forecast for the US Dollar: Neutral US Dollar impressively resilient after disappointing employment data Recent weeks hint USD more responsive to positive vs negative news Services ISM, Beige Book, Fed-speak may help greenback recovery The US Dollar continues to impress with its resilience last week. In the past three weeks, the greenback managed to navigate past political turmoil as well as Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s inconclusive performance at the Jackson Hole symposium, emerging relatively unscathed. It has now managed to shrug off August’s broadly disappointing employment report as well. The numbers showed that last ...
Deals and Financings Berry Genomics (SHZ: 000710), a Beijing diagnostics and sequencing company, completed its $648 million reverse merger that lists the company on the Shenzhen exchange (see story). Berry merged into a company formerly known as Chengdu Tianxing Instrument & Meter, but the company’s legacy business has been sold off and its name was changed to Berry Genomics earlier this month. Founded in 2010, Berry is known for its non-invasive prenatal DNA screening test. It has also expanded into genetic testing for disease screening and diagnosis. China’s iPharma signed a binding term sheet to in-license Greater Ch...
Review & Update The Rule of 20 The Risk To Passive Sector & Market Analysis 401k Plan Manager As I wrote this past Tuesday, we were lucky. Thousands who live along the Texas coastline were not. I am thankful. I am grateful. I am hopeful. The return to “normalcy,” for most of us, will take some time. It will happen. Let’s just try and remember this fellowship and hang onto it for a while longer. Review & Update Speaking of a return to “normalcy,” it didn’t take long for the markets to overlook the disaster from “Hurricane Harvey,” and begin rationalizing why this is yet another “support” for the conti...
The main reason investors have been cautious heading into this week was because of the potential for a North Korean flare up. It turned out that the market decided to ignore the North Korean risk as the last week before Labor Day, when most people go on vacation, was fantastic. The Nasdaq was up 2.75% which was the best weekly gain since December 2016. This was led by Apple which was up 2.62% this week. It now has an $847 billion market cap. The event which will unveil the new iPhone will be September 12th, meaning your window to sell it if you’re a short-term trader is closing. Friday was the beginning of September which usually means bad ...
Speculators did not make any significant adjustment to gross positions, which we define as 10k or more contracts in the currency futures, during the CFTC reporting week ending August 29. However, the Australian dollar bulls came close by adding 9.4k contracts to the gross long position. It stood at 101k contracts, which is the highest since April 2016. The gross Aussie long position has tripled since the middle of June. The gross short position increased by 3.4k contracts to 34.4k. The net long speculative position of 66.5k, the largest in four years. We track 16 gross positions of large speculators. In the latest reporting period, 13...
There are a lot of dividend ETFs out there to choose from, but this segment of the marketplace is fairly concentrated. Of the 170 ETFs categorized as dividend ETFs by ETFdb.com, just a dozen have more than $2 billion in assets. In other words, just a handful of dividend ETFs get most of the attention. That’s kind of a shame because there are a number of solid, high performing dividend ETFs with relatively small asset bases that are just as strong, if not stronger, that aren’t getting a lot of notice. One of those funds is the First Trust Rising Dividend Achievers ETF (RDVY). At 3½ years old, the fund has roughly $250 million in assets. ...