Stocks were mixed today as energy and precious metal stocks scored big gains, while the rest of the market languished. The big news of the day was the surge in oil and natural gas prices. While we continue to hope we are dead wrong on our view of energy ever more it appears that energy is emerging as a major issue for both investors and the economy. Read More

Stocks remain in an uptrend. Last week marked the seventh consecutive week of gains. And as we have been stressing these are not just weak-kneed advances but rather is part of very broad-based move. Breadth last week was over 2:1 in favor of gainers, the third consecutive week of better than 2 to 1 gains. Read More

On the heels of favorable seasonal, technical, economic, and monetary factors stocks continued to rally climbing over 1 percent today. The five-week rally in stocks is one of the most powerful and broad in the past generation and indeed nearly matches the market blast-off in March. To find a rally significantly more powerful than the recent one you have to go all the way back to 1982. Read More

On this day very close to Christmas, we can add to the cheer of the season by saying our stock market indicators remain resolutely bullish. Our Master Key has ticked up to 3.5, which by itself is a strong argument for higher stock prices over the next four weeks. Read More

The way markets or stocks react to news is often a clue to how strong or weak a market or stock is. On this score based on today’s action, oil, natural gas, and gold get very high marks, while the dollar and stocks get poor grades. The apprehension of Saddam, one of the most evil men to set foot on the earth, is an unequivocal positive. Read More

Solid market breadth last week combined with a tempered recovery in industrial commodity prices left our Master Key virtually unchanged at a very solid 3.2. Now in the very strong December-January period, it would probably take a real bolt from the blue to derail the market. Friday’s employment report was largely a non-event. Read More

Our Master Key on the strength of better than 4:1 weekly market breadth, ticked up to 3.03. As we mentioned last week either very weak or very strong breadth would be enough to tip our indicator from mildly bullish to solidly bullish. We got very strong breadth and thus currently have a very strong bullish reading. Read More

Our short-term Master Key improved to a slightly better than neutral 1.2. The gain in the index reflects the recent dip in industrial commodity prices, which until their slight correction last week had been rising at the fastest clip since the 1970’s.   Read More

Despite strong economic news, stocks sold off a bit last week and remained under pressure today. That’s the sort of action you expect in a tired market. And tired is a pretty good adjective for stocks. With our Master Key still a neutral minus .14, we are not looking for a major sell-off, but a decline of about 7 percent or so from the highs. Read More