The week that was saw very choppy action. Monday was lower as was Tuesday. Wednesday was higher. Thursday was lower. Friday was higher but gave up a big gain. More important Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday all saw closing changes of +/-1%. This is the first time we have seen three consecutive days moving more than +/-1% since February 11th through 17th.
Winners for the week were health care and energy as well as materials. Utilities and financials were lower for the week.
For the week stock indexes were lower across the board. The S&P 500 fell -1.21%. The Russell 2000 fell -1.82%.
Each week I track the spread between stocks with a strong technical rank and those with a poor technical rank. Stocks with strong relative strength rose on average fell -1.10% and those with a weak relative strength fell -0.80%. The conclusion is that investors selling recent winners.
Intraday action was all over the place this past week after an up one ended April 1st and a down one the week ended March 24th. Our confidence score on the intraday action was 44% after a strong week last week at 76%. The range is typically between 10% and 90%. Last week was the first losing week since the week ended February 19th.
Most sectors struggled for the week. The worst sector was Energy as noted. For the month there are no sectors in the red. For the past three months, financials and healthcare are still in the red losing -4.4% and -7.7% respectively.
The big worry for this week is whether profit taking will continue as we head into April 15th when taxes are due, though a technicality does not make them due until Monday, April 18th. Last week we noted often there is some seasonal weakness during this stretch and that seems to be coming into play.
We get a ton of fedspeak from the B Team, i.e. Federal Reserve District Presidents. Economic releases are modest this week. Earnings kick off Q1 earningsas Alcoa (AA) starts the onslaught. Though for the week things remain modest.
Since the FOMC announcement in March, the dollar initially moved lower than rallied through March 24th before moving to another lower lower this past Friday. The U.S. Dollar is struggled to hold at current levels and moved to a new low this week.
Treasuries led by TLT rose 1.02%. Corporates led by LQD rose 0.29% while high yield led by HYG rose 0.18%.
Emerging markets (EEM) fell by -2.25% last week. Meanwhile Europe (EFA) fell frationally by -0.16%. China (FXI) also struggled dropping -2.26%.
Conclusion: Investors shrugged off weakness three weeks ago and were buyers of stock post Yellen’s comments two weeks ago. Then struggled this week. Failure to get back above 2050 could bring 2000 into play. The bottom line is the stock market is starting to look like Jordan Spieth’s golf game, rather shaky.
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