The stock market started off the New Year on the downside for the first time since 2008. But still, the Spyder Trust (SPY) is just 1% below the recent highs. The declining issues outweighed the advancing ones by over a two-to-one margin, which has dropped the McClellan oscillator to +58 on the close. The oscillator did form a slight negative divergence at Tuesday’s highs.
The futures are higher before the opening, and it would take several consecutive down days to suggest that a deeper correction was underway. The important support for the S&P 500 (SPX) is in the 1,800-1,810 area.
As I noted yesterday, in my technical market review, the bullish sentiment is quite high, with the number of bearish financial newsletter writers close to a 26-year low. It will take a more severe decline before these numbers start to turn around.
With 83% of the stocks in the Dow Industrial now above their 50-day MAs, the Dow is clearly in overbought territory, but below the recent high at 90%. At the correction lows in August and September, less that 20% were above their 50-day MAs. Those types of readings create a more favorable risk-buying opportunity.
Therefore, when I ran my monthly starc band scan of the thirty Dow Industrial stocks on New Year’s day, I was not surprised to find quite a few stocks near their starc+ bands. When a stock or ETF is close to this band it is considered to be a high-risk buy, since 93% of the price activity should stay within these bands. The SPDR Dow Industrials (DIA) closed last month 3.5% below its monthly starc+ band.
However, these overbought stocks are also typically market leaders and therefore should be attractive for new purchase once they either correct, or trade in a range where the risk can be better controlled.
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