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Market Direction Is Important –
Updated Chart of the S&P 500 and Secondary Signals
Of our Four secondary indicators under our MTI:
Relative Strength Index (RSI)-Positive
Chaikin Money Flow (CMF)-Positive
MACD- Positive
Money Flow Index-MFI-Positive
More on the Market and the Economy:
Stocks rallied on higher oil prices, with the S&P 500 closing on Friday at the highest level of the year. The index logged its fourth straight weekly gain, ending up 1.1% for the week.
Source: dshort.com
This week data will be released on housing starts, industrial production, retail sales, inflation and the Fed’s FOMC meeting announcement.
Small business owners were a bit less optimistic in February, as the NFIB optimism index dipped to 92.9 – the lowest since 2013. According to the NFIB, “Overall tepid economic conditions, combined with November’s upcoming elections are continuing to lead to an environment where small business owners are wary about future growth”. NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg commented that “All of this generates uncertainty, the enemy of spending and hiring behavior that would move the economy forward at a faster pace”.
Six of the ten components slipped, while four were unchanged.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model held steady with a forecast of 2.2% growth for the first quarter following the release of the wholesale trade report.
One million homeowners regained positive equity in 2015, according to CoreLogic, bringing the number of properties with positive equity to 46.3 million. Still, there were 4.3 million properties with negative equity in the fourth quarter.
The SEC issued an Investor Alert last week warning fraud victims about government impersonators:
“The SEC staff is aware of government impersonators targeting investors who have already been victims of fraud. Often, the impersonators will claim to help investors recover their investment-related losses for a fee. This fee may be disguised as some type of tax, deposit, or refundable insurance bond. Or the government impersonators may claim to offer legal services for a fee to help investors receive compensation or a settlement payout relating to a SEC enforcement action or a class action lawsuit. For example, we are aware of communications pretending to be from the SEC that claim to offer legal services to investors with regard to the SEC’s enforcement action against Banc de Binary.
Avoid becoming a victim twice. Be aware that:
• Impersonators may copy or imitate the official SEC seal without authorization.
• Fake documents may include forged signatures of SEC officials.
• Fake documents may look authentic and include a link to the SEC’s website, www.sec.gov.
• Impersonators may send email messages that appear to come from SEC email accounts.
• Impersonators may use email addresses that contain “.gov” as part of the domain address, but that do not end in “.gov”.
• If you receive an email message claiming to be from a U.S. government agency and the sender’s email address does not end in “.gov”, “.mil”, or “fed.us”, you should be particularly skeptical”.
As March is Women’s History Month, and infographic on industries with the most female managers:
