Weekly Stock Market Commentary 7/14/2023

By Lawrence G. McMillan

The last five trading days have seen $SPX rally strongly, breaking out to new 2023 highs. This keeps the $SPX chart bullish and keeps us in our "core" bullish position. $SPX has now reached the first (minor) resistance area at 4510. Above here, the next significant resistance is at 4630, and then the all-time highs at 4800 would be within reach.

A brief pullback last week closed the gaps on the $SPX chart (although new ones have opened up with this week's rally). That left 4385 as a minor support level, with 4330 as a stronger one. Below there, the 4200 level which acted as resistance for much of 2023 before the early June breakout to the upside continues to be support. In my opinion, a pullback that extends below 4330 would be bearish, and would cause us to close our "core" bullish positions.

Equity-only put-call ratios continue to crawl lower, meaning that the buy signals are still in place. They are both at the lowest point in the last year, meaning that they are quite overbought. But call volume has been pretty heavy this week as $SPX has moved to new highs for the year. These will not generate sell signals until they roll over and begin to trend upward.

Breadth has been very strong in the last five trading days. So, the breadth oscillators once again have reversed direction and are now on buy signals, in overbought territory. With so many whipsaws from these oscillators, we are not using them for a trade at this time.

$VIX rallied briefly when the broad market sold off a week ago (but never went into "spiking" mode). In any case, there won't be a problem for stocks unless $VIX returns to "spiking" mode. Otherwise, the trend of $VIX buy signal remains in place.

In summary, we are maintaining a "core" bullish position. We are raising trailing stops and rolling calls up to higher strikes as they become deeply in-the-money. We will trade other confirmed signals around this "core" position.