Trend-Following: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Free)

The bull market is clear and present with new highs in large-caps, large-cap techs, mid-caps and small-caps. Micro-caps are the only missing component, but IWC is very close. Participation continues to expand with breakouts in the Industrials

The Market Regime remains bullish and participation broadened over the last six weeks. SPY and QQQ were already doing their part with clear uptrends and new highs throughout the year. The S&P MidCap 400 SPDR (MDY) broke out of a long triangle in late October

The October run continued into November with small-caps breaking out and participation expanding. Some of the old leaders, however, are still leading with new highs in QQQ, XLK and some tech-related ETFs. The setups and breakouts from early-mid October are bearing fruit and ETFs with big runs the last four to five weeks are in the trend-monitoring phase.

Stocks continued their October run with SPY and QQQ closing at new highs. Mid-caps and small-caps are still struggling, but their charts are more bullish than bearish. Some of the old industry ETFs corrected over the

This commentary is an addition to Thursday’s ETF report. ETFs in today’s commentary formed long corrective patterns from spring to fall and made various breakout attempts here in October. The Transports ETF is the leader with a strong move above the August high. The copper and base metals

The Market Regime remains bullish with SPY and QQQ hitting new highs on Thursday. The S&P MidCap 400 SPDR (MDY) and S&P 500 EW ETF (RSP) hit new highs Monday-Tuesday and then fell back pretty hard on Wednesday, before bouncing on Thursday. New highs are clearly more bullish than bearish. The noise level is

Earnings season is in full swing and this is leading to a little more volatility. Volatility mostly affects individual stocks, but it can also affect market cap weighted ETFs when the big components make big moves. Overall, the market regime remains bullish with fresh new highs in SPY, RSP and MDY. There are not

Stocks continued their October run with the S&P 500 SPDR, S&P 500 EW ETF and S&P MidCap 400 SPDR hitting new highs. Participation is clearly broadening and this is reflected in the percentage of S&P 500 stocks above selective moving averages. There were also 17 new uptrend signals via the StochClose indicator.

The Biotech ETF (IBB) is a rather peculiar ETF because of the performance differentials among its components and the changing of the weights. Moderna (7.84%) and BioNTech (3.82%) account for almost

The Market Regime remains bullish and participation broadened here in October. The Finance SPDR and Consumer Discretionary SPDR hit new highs in October, and the Technology SPDR ended its correction with a breakout. Broadening participation comes from the Industrials SPDR and

SPY and QQQ ended their corrections with breakouts last week and this is bullish for the broader market. Small-caps (IJR) are also making a breakout bid as strength within the market broadens. In particular, we are seeing leadership from ETFs associated with industrial

Stocks surged again on Thursday, but this week’s surge was different than the Thursday’s surge the prior week. SPY and QQQ followed through after the open and S&P 500 breadth showed broad participation. Small-caps also bounced, but the S&P SmallCap 600 SPDR

The S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) followed through on last week’s gap with a gap-surge on Thursday. In contrast to last week’s gap, SPY moved higher after the strong open on Thursday and formed a long white candlestick. The open is near

Even though breadth during the recent pops was uninspiring, the bulls are not backing down and we are in a bull market environment, as per the Market Regime page. There are really only two trading/investing options in a bull market: long or cash. Short positions are not realistic options. There are

Stocks surged on Thursday with SPY and QQQ gapping higher in an attempt to end their pullbacks. The gaps-surges are largely holding, but breadth was lackluster and techs fell back on Friday. Rising Treasury yields are influencing current market dynamics. This creates a headwind for

The S&P 500 and broad market indexes popped on Wednesday-Thursday. We also saw short-term breakouts in a number of ETFs. Are these breakouts enough to end the corrective period that began with the September decline? Or, is this just a short-term head fake that will

There are plenty of ETFs with corrections or downtrends the last few months, but some of these are showing short-term relative strength. Similarly, several tech-related ETFs firmed with hamari on Monday-Tuesday and closed strong on Wednesday.