Weekly Stock Market Commentary 6/2/17

By Lawrence G. McMillan

The market has roared to new all-time highs. This brute force market strength belies sell signals and a certain amount of general negativity in many of the other indicators. But it doesn't really seem to matter, as $SPX remains the strongest and, by definition, the most important indicator.

For the record, there is support at 2400 (this week's lows) and roughly 2350 (the lows of the big down day two weeks ago). An upside target of 2480 is in play, from the width of the previous trading range.

To the naked eye, both equity-only put-call ratios remain on buy signals. The naked eye is probably a good measure in this case, because the computer analysis programs have deemed the weighted ratio to be on a sell signal for several days now. In reality, the weighted ratio is overbought, at multi-year lows, but this seems to be in line with $SPX making new all-time highs.

Market breadth has been lackluster. In fact, the breadth oscillators have been such laggards that they gave sell signals on Tuesday of this week, after the market backed off a little. That was reversed with yesterday's push to new $SPX highs, so those sell signals have been canceled out.

Volatility remains extremely low. In the intermediate-term sense, that is positive for stocks, since $SPX can continue to rise as long as $VIX is not in a demonstrable uptrend.

In summary, the dullness which had overtaken the market may have been broken with yesterday's strong upside breakout by $SPX. That alone would be a good thing, for it would indicate a more tradeable market. In any case, the outlook must remain positive (certainly for the intermediate-term) since the $SPX chart is now solidly positive.

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