Weekly Stock Market Commentary 8/22/14

By Lawrence G. McMillan

The rally that began on August 8th has extended quickly and strongly to take $SPX to new intraday and closing all-time highs. When it crossed over resistance at 1960, the $SPX chart improved from "bearish" to "neutral." If another all-time closing high is registered today, that will officially make the $SPX chart "bullish."

Equity-only put-call ratios are in one of those in-between states. Consider the two charts in Figures 2 and 3. You can see that they have curled over in the last three or four days. That is apparently a buy signal -- at least to the naked eye. However, the computer programs that analyze these charts continue to rate them as "bearish."

Market breadth has been quite positive. As a result, both breadth oscillators are on buy signals, and they are in overbought territory.

Volatility indices dropped to very low levels. At these levels, volatility is benign, and stocks can rise.

In summary, all of the indicators have swiftly swung back to "bullish" except for the put-call ratios. A consecutive close at new highs will make the intermediate-term outlook bullish once again.

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