Weekly Stock Market Commentary 5/30/14

By Lawrence G. McMillan

The broad market, as measured by the Standard & Poors 500 Index ($SPX) and other indices, has broken out to new all-time highs again. This time, the breakout quickly extended with a strong second day, and today added even more distance. This has turned the $SPX chart bullish.

Equity-only put-call ratios had been operating on split signals for about a month. But today the standard ratio finally rolled over to an official buy signal, thereby joining the weighted ratio, which has been on a buy signal for a while.

Market breadth has been an accurate indicator in the last few weeks. All of our breadth measures are on buy signals at this time, including the NYSE cumulative-advance decline line, which has reached new all-time highs along with the stock market. That is positive confirmation of the upside breakout.

Volatility is getting more and more scrutiny of late. One thing we can say for certain is that the volatility indices ($VXST, $VIX, and $VXW) are low. That is an overbought condition. But it is not (yet) a sell signal.

In summary, the outlook is now solidly bullish, although the overbought conditions -- especially the low volatility indices -- indicate that a sharp, but likely short-lived correction is possible at any time.

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