Was thinking about jumping on the blog and offering a quick market update, given this morning’s strong rally. Nick just made the task easy.
He, focusing on other items this morning, chatted me the right question; “How’s volume/breadth today?”
My response (I’ll add/edit where needed for clarity):
“Funny, just now checked it: Breadth, in terms of adv/dec (advancing vs declining issues) very good…
SPX (SP 500) vs Eq Wt (the S&P 500 Index vs the S&P 500 Equal Weight [each member carries equal weight]), not so much; SPX up 2.5%, Eq Wt up 1.7%…
Volume’s weak: vs yesterday at this time -18%, vs 5-day average -14.4%. I.e., the past 3 days of selling (at this time of day) saw notably more volume (conviction)…
In terms of highs/lows, not so good: 4-week spx 4/9, 52-week 0/0…. 4-week Nasdaq 4/11, 52-week 1/1…
NYSE up/down volume positive: 1840/808
Summary: For the moment, while the adv/dec data are positive…. the rest says it’s just kinda wait and see… I could say “relief rally”… but we only had 3 days of selloff…. not nearly enough to shake the hoodies (millennials who trade on the Robin Hood platform/and all other retail traders) out of the trees… Now, beyond that, we have hugely bullish advisers, relatively low short interest (the opposite of each equals cash on sidelines and the potential for large short-covering rallies) and so on… I.e., not nearly the fuel we had during the entire rally to this point to push hard into new highs… That said, on low volume (lack of liquidity), sure, we could see some serious spikes higher….. and lower…”