The market's momentum is slowing, but it hasn't necessarily reversed yet. The number of negative breadth days, and their intensity is increasing. The $SPX chart (Figure 1) also shows a waning of momentum, but even the first support level at 2070 has not been broken.
$SPX closed above 2100 this week for the first time since last December. The Index chart remains bullish, with support at 2070 and 2040. There is multitudinous resistance between 2100 and the all-time highs at 2135, but this market hasn't had problems with resistance so far.
Equity-only put-call ratios remain on buy signals, even though they are mostly just moving sideways recently.
McMillan Analysis Corp. founder and president Lawrence G. McMillan recently wrote an article detailing the current state of the stock market for MarketWatch. Read the following preview or click the link below for the full article:
On April 15, 2016, the CBOE began disseminating VIX prices in the overnight session. Now, the VIX index will be open during extended trading hours from 2:15 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. Central time. From the CBOE press realese:
A week ago, it seemed that the bears had a chance at taking control. Not only did that not happen, but instead the bulls reasserted themselves strongly.
$SPX broke out over resistance at 2070 with a strong move on Wednesday. This chart is bullish, and thus so are we (and you should be, too).
Equity-only put-call ratios remain on buy signals, although the ratios are more or less moving sideways now, rather than declining rapidly.
Stocks are struggling to maintain the stupendous rally that began on February 11th. While there has been a slowing of momentum, the $SPX chart remains in an uptrend for now.
The equity-only put-call ratios are both on buy signals, although there was a flirtation with a sell signal from the standard ratio (Figure 2) during this past week.
The recent Department of Labor Fiduciary Proposal threatened to elimate the trading of options and futures in all retirement accounts. Due to successful lobbying by the options industry, the deceision was made to exlude the options and futures ban from the new rules. CBOE Holdings Chief Executive Officer Edward T. Tilly made the following comment on the DOL's decion:
Ian McAvity – a friend and colleague – passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. Ian was a “gold bug,” technical analyst, and humorist – and first-rate at all of them.
If you ever had a chance to see him talk at one of the technical analysis or precious metals conferences, you would certainly remember his blend of humor, irony, disdain for the government mismanagement, and insightful predictions.
This article was originally featured in the 4/1/16 edition of The Option Strategist Newsletter.
It is worth noting that there has been a lot of discussion in the media about how cheap $VIX is, and these articles then have a bearish connotation for stocks. Two prominent articles appeared in the Striking Price column in Barron’s and on Zerohedge.com. The Zerohedge article covered a lot of interesting things about volatility futures and ETFs, but both of these articles mistakenly asserted that an upward-sloping term structure in the $VIX futures is bearish. I have seen the same opinion expressed many times on CNBC by traders who should know better, although I haven’t seen it there this week.
A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned that the highest “stocks only” breadth oscillator reading in history had taken place. In fact, the top three readings of all time occurred on March 3rd, 4th, and 7th of this month (March, 2016). In addition, the 15th and 17th most extreme readings of all time occurred on March 2nd and March 11th, respectively. We wanted to study the other extreme readings to see what happened after those. Is this a significant longer-term indicator, or is it just indicative of the fact that short-term momentum is strong? The complete "Top 20"
