Market News 9-11-23

We definitely have a two-sided story to the market right now. The earning season has been anything but spectacular but at the same time the S&P 500 is one quick move from all time highs, a conundrum for sure.

If this has your head spinning you’re not alone so really the right thing to do right now is make sure you manage your risk until we start to have directional volatility.

To make matters even more confusing the S&P 500 is now showing higher highs and higher lows over the last 4 weeks of trading.  but the reality is we need to get separation from this 444 to 446 level before we can have conviction in a bigger move.

To give it a label which everybody loves to have we are neutral at best despite that recent rally.  I know quite a few places are saying we’re in a confirmed uptrend and technically I would say that’s correct but for those of us trading everyday conviction is not exactly near a 10. 

Something else that’s interesting is the market internals, specifically the advance decline line, show signs of being less bearish but not yet quite bullish yet. 

To put it plainly we have conflicting data. For me that means lower initial position size For my swing trades.

 The pockets of opportunity that we’re looking at right now are in technology as the sector continues to dominate the amount of stocks showing stacked order flow. 

Two specific industry groups within technology software applications and software infrastructure or the areas where you should be focusing right now. Many of these stocks not only had great earnings but they’re following through higher on the earnings. 

Oracle is scheduled to report Monday after the close which becomes very interesting since the stock has now rallied very close to all-time highs. These earnings plays have been the most reliable and quite frankly most predictable follow through that we’ve seen in Q3.

Energy stocks are right there at the top of the list with technology with crude oil inventories apparently shrinking which should be good for longer term moves in those stocks. 

/ On the bearish side of things, Industrials broke down last week with Boeing leading the way lower. Healthcare and Consumer Staples both also moved into bearish territory