Weekly Stock Market Commentary 5/15/15

By Lawrence G. McMillan

The broad stock market has continued to frustrate both bulls and bears by remaining within a trading range for quite some time. However, today, $SPX closed at a new all-time high and thus is on the verge of an upside breakout. While this produced much glee on CNBC, there could be problems once again if this breakout is not confirmed.

The simplest confirmation would be another $SPX close at new all-time highs, and this time above the all-time intraday high at 2125.92.

Equity-only put-call ratios rolled over to sell signals just a week ago. They are now rising, and thus will remain on those sell signals as long as that is the case.

Market breadth has been rather lackluster recently, and in general has been a problem since last summer. Today, breadth was positive enough to barely cancel out the "stocks only" sell signal.

Meanwhile, volatility indices and derivatives have generally been in a bullish mode for stocks for some time. It appears that $VIX is going to have to break out above the highs at 17 (from March) in order to truly turn bearish. That seems miles from here.

In summary, $SPX has made another new high, unaccompanied by many other indicators. This is very similar to what it did a few weeks ago. Primarily, we want to see new highs in $DJX and $MID, plus heavily expanding breadth, and buy signals from the put-call ratios. Can all of that happen? Yes, of course, but will it? That seems far from certain.

This Market Commentary is an abbreviated version of the commentary featured in The Option Strategist Newsletter.