Wow, another Mother’s Day. They can really get to you, especially when your Mom is 92 and everyone else of her generation in the family is gone.
Things my mother told me… and some she didn’t
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Tag Archives: NASDAQ 100
Did you forget?
We all get busy.
And the media seems to be blaring new headlines at us every day about events that literally take our breath away.
Breaking away
Is there anything prettier in sports than when a basketball player steals the ball and breaks out beyond the defense? He or she flies to the basket and leaps in a seemingly effortless glide toward it. With hand outstretched, the ball ascends and then drops through the hoop, and SCORES.
Developed and emerging markets are leading the way
Two positive weeks in a row was enough to push the S&P 500, NASDAQ, Emerging Markets, Developed Countries and Russell 2000 indices into positive territory for the month. Until Thursday, November was ready to join October as a down month for the domestic market.
Another week, another dip downward for the NASDAQ 100
It was another down week for equities, and the NASDAQ 100 fell 1.93%. The Index is off 321 points from its multi-year high in mid-September, almost equaling the 326-point loss earlier in the year when the Index dropped from late March through late May.
What happened among the stocks in the Index this past week?
The market has voted
It was another tough week for stocks with the market moving decidedly lower after last week’s election results. The broader averages were off more than 2%, with the tech-heavy NASDAQ again leading the way lower. Also weak were Utilities and Financials, with the XLU off more than 4% and breaking key support in the process. This is also bad news for the bulls, in that, financially-related stocks typically lead the broad market averages at important (i.e. cyclical) tops and bottoms.
As we noted two weeks ago, the technical health of the markets is starting to weaken pretty materially. Specifically, while the S&P 500 is still holding its intermediate-term trendline (A), the NASDAQ has now clearly broken an equivalent trendline on its chart (B). This break was foreshadowed by a “sell” signal on the MACD (C), which is one of the oldest and most widely recognized trend-following indicators around. We are also seeing the net number of new 52-week highs push further into negative territory (or net new lows expand), which also may confirm the break in the NASDAQ (D).
From here, the most likely scenario is for the markets to test support in the area of either their summer ’12 lows (shown) or summer ’11 highs, which are slightly higher (not shown). Should that occur, whether these levels hold, will be of critical importance to the longer term health of the market.
Downtrends continue in the NASDAQ 100
It was another down week for the NASDAQ 100, the fifth in a row, and now down six of the last seven weeks since mid-September, when the markets reached their 2012 highs. The
NASDAQ 100 lost 2.72% and is below its 200-day moving average five of the last eight trading sessions.
While the election, or at least the results of the election, seems to be the obvious reason for this weakness, there were a few stock stories from the week gone by.
Priceline announced the purchase of Kayak for more than a billion in stock and cash. As is usual in these deals, the acquiring company stock, which is in the NASDAQ 100, fell on the news.
Uncertainty reigns
Since I last wrote this column we have had a couple of election year debates that have settled one issue: the race for the White House is not settled. Going into the debates, many commentators were declaring the race over. There were rumors of the Romney team having trouble raising money and it was thought that it was all over but the vote counting and the Obama victory speech.
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