Sold in May Has Not Occurred [Yet] Strong Jobs Report Extends Rally into Friday Morning

NASDAQ futures are coming into Friday gap up after an overnight session featuring normal range and volume.  Price held range for most of the evening and then broke through the Thursday high around 8:30am just after a strong jobs report.

USA Nonfarm Payrolls for Apr 211.0K vs 185.0K Est; Prior 98.0K

Unemployment Rate for Apr 4.40% vs 4.60% Est; Prior 4.50%

Also on the economic docket today we have the Baker Hughes rig count at 1pm, Yellen giving a low-impact speech at Brown University at 1:30pm, then Consumer Credit at 3pm.

Yesterday we printed a normal variation up.  Price held onto upper balance, sort of churning around in the value zone (pictured below).

Heading into today my primary expectation is for sellers to work into the overnight inventory and close the gap down to 5626.25 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 2 buyers reject a move back into Thursday’s range 5631 and we work up through overnight high 5639.50 then close the gap up at 5640.  Trade sustains above that level setting up a rally into the weekend.

Hypo 3 sellers close gap down to 5626.25 then continue lower, down through overnight low 5612.50.  Look for buyers down at 5595 and two way trade to ensue.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves:

NASDAQ futures are coming into Thursday gap up after an overnight session featuring normal range and volume.  Price worked higher overnight, taking out the Wednesday high before settling into two-way trade.  At 8:30am Initial/Continuing jobless claims data was better than expected.

Also on the economic calendar today we have Factory/Durable goods orders at 10am.

Yesterday we printed a normal variation down.  Price opened gap down and liquidation occurred during the first hour of trade.  Buyers stepped in ahead of the Monday low and two-way trade ensued.

Heading into today my primary expectation is for sellers to work into the overnight inventory and close the gap down to 5612.50.  Price continues lower, down through overnight low 5607.50 setting up a move to target 5595.25 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 2 buyers work up through overnight high 5634 and target the gap up at 5640 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 3 strong selling pushes price down to the open gap at 5581.25 before two way trade ensues.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves:

How eloquent of Coach to report earnings the morning after #MetBall2017 and best Wall Street expectations, on a Tuesday!?  Shares of $COH are up more than 10% and trading at a new 52-week high after a first quarter rife with discretionary spending by our beloved upper class.

Coach Q3 EPS $0.46 vs $0.44 Est, Sales $995M vs $1.02B Est

Consider these earnings a small addenda to the belief that the United States is entering a period of economic prosperity not seen since the early ’20s.

Writer’s note: My homies and I are long $COH as part of the Exodus Q1 Top-Down Analysis (Annual) portfolio.  However, this is somewhat irrelevant due to the remaining holding period (11 more months before next adjustment).

Enough of the boring Wall Street guff, here are some scenes from Monday evening’s gala, enjoy.

Emma Roberts, goodness:

Bella Hadid in a stunning Alexander Wang dress, politely posing with Kendall Jenner, Wiz Khalifa, and ASAP Rocky:

Australian model and Orange Is The New Black acrtress Ruby Rose stole the spotlight with her ruffled frock, designed by Burberry.  Note the matching man-human arm piece, brilliant composition:

Rihanna flew up from Barbados with a complicated dress that certainly made eating dinner tricky:

And finally, the couple of the night (so adorbs) was Selina Gomez and TheWeeknd (thas his name).  Selina rocked a custom-made Coach dress.  Very nice, very clean:

As you can see, the event was a success for high-end brands, especially Coach, who managed to ultimately win Met Gala’s unofficial fashion show by picking the hottest couple of the night.

All very gay, all very bullish.  Maybe you buy Coach shares today, yes? Get good price before it is gone.

Or not.  Either way, Coach put some nice numbers on the scoreboard Tuesday that will go a long way toward this company reasserting their earnings growth trajectory.

BULLISH

NASDAQ futures are heading into Tuesday gap up after an overnight session featuring normal range and volume.  Price slowly drifted to a new record high in calm trade.

The economic calendar is light today.  We have a 4-week T-bill auction at 11:30am.

Keep in mind we also have Apple earnings after the close.

Yesterday we printed a trend up.  After beginning the week gap up, right at last Friday’s high, buyers rejected an attempt back down into the Friday range setting up a rally which lasted the entire day.

Heading into today my primary expectation is for buyers to work up through overnight high 5639.25 but stall out just above it before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 2 sellers work down through overnight low 5628.50 and down to 5618.25 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 3 strong sellers trigger a liquidation down to 5595.25 before two way trade ensues.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves:

NASDAQ futures came into the first day of May gap up after an overnight session featuring normal range and volume.  Price worked higher, uninterrupted, overnight, pushing the index to new all-time highs ahead of the opening bell.  At 8:30am Personal Expenditure core data came out mixed, slightly below expectations.

At 10am ISM Manufacturing came out below expectations.  Sellers pushed on the release and are gaining some traction.

Also on the economic docket today we have a 3- and 6-month T-bill auctions, $39bln and $33bln respectively.

Last week began with a strong gap up and buyers continuing their campaign higher for most of the week.  The performance of each major index last week can be seen below:

On Friday the NASDAQ printed a normal variation down.  The day started out flat and sellers worked price lower, pushing into the spike seen Thursday afternoon after Amazon reported strong earnings.  The NASDAQ eventually balanced out Friday, closing near the session midpoint.

This morning began with an open auction outside range.  The first break from the range was higher after buyers rejected an attempt to move back into last Friday’s range.

My primary expectation today is for buyers to continue working higher.  There are no reference points above, but look for two-way trade to ensue around 5620.

Hypo 2 sellers work into Friday’s range and probe down to 5559 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 3 strong buyers work up through 5625.25 and sustain trade above it, setting up a trend day.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves:

At the end of the first quarter, a top-down sector analysis was performed, and the best performing sectors were screened using Exodus to narrow the list of potential investment candidates down to something manageable.  There’s a video describing the entire process.  It is a half hour long and very boring, I suggest you skip it.

Anyhow, not that it really matters (this portfolio is a 1-year hold, so 1-month performance is irrelevant) but here is the first month’s performance:

There is something to be said about starting on the right foot, not having to play from behind MAYBE, whatever.  It hit the ground running.  The portfolio turned out 1.8% MOAR returns than the S&P 500.  In the industry, they call that alpha.

This is not a sales pitch for our Exodus software, or even a campaign to promote my stock basket.  None of that matters.  I am sharing this investment approach because of the objectivity it is founded upon. Cold and dead logic—solid foundations for building.  Sure, Exodus offers a powerful tool kit for making objective decisions, but there are other ways.  You could collect a large data set onto Excel, for example, and run some statistics to isolate quality investments.

When the money goes into these accounts, it is with confidence in the process, liberating you from the distracting/bipolar nature of individual stocks.  Sure, you could buy an index ETF and balance it with a bond ETF and a gold ETF and a REIT ETF and bunch of other fee-sucking ETFs.

Or hire a fee-based firm, Mr. Big Bucks.

Or, or…embrace some of the latest disruptive tools like Motif (no affiliation) to take control of your investing.  We are entering a period of economic prosperity gentlemen.  Are you positioning yourself today for how you want your life to be in the roaring ’20s?

My top-down index compliments the GARP portfolio, Fly’s semiannually adjusted portfolio, quite nicely. GARP is also out performing the S&P.  Here is the performance since its June adjustment:

Note: GARP portfolio is members only

Outsourcing my stock picking to The Fly and his time machine allows me to live the fat man’s lifestyle—sashaying around the house in a robe eating hoagies—the best of times.

So far the latest top-down basket is doing well.  Will it outperform the S&P 500 for the duration of its holding period?

As always, TBD

A warm spring greetings from the scientists at iBankCoin laboratory!

With the last day of April underway, it is with humility and patience that the 129th Edition of Strategy Session was published inside Exodus.  Inside the report, all the latest algorithmic signals and data quirks inside the software were parsed and verified to help members get a sense of what the software is suggesting as we head into May.

Investors look at May differently because it has a catchy euphemism (May, away, it rhymes!) to describe the best course of action, which is to roam through nature as it blooms instead of being glued to the stock exchange.  However, enjoying woodlands, mountains, streams, beaches, and even cities is something we can do every month with the right tools.

If we ever find ourselves so emotionally attached to our stock market exposure that we cannot look away, that anxiety could be telling a story—you have too much skin in the game.

Perhaps it is time to explore other investments, like in people.  No, not owning humans, but giving them a kick in the right direction of doing what they do best and love.  Or buy a physical asset like land or a goat.

While the temptation to ‘go away’ in May is high, especially in the north where we emerge from months of unpleasant weather, you may want to stay dialed into the action during the first week of trade.  Most importantly, we have a Fed rate decision coming up on Wednesday and like 90% of investors are expecting Yellen and her team to leave rates unchanged.  If they instead bump their target borrowing rate up 25 basis points, we could see the markets take a liquidation hit.

April saw the NASDAQ start leaving many gaps behind.  It began moving higher during extended trade and holding the gains.  This is real strength that makes it difficult for sellers to execute on their losing positions.  In total, six gaps have been left unfilled during the month.

Combine the April action with the whispers of Exodus algorithms, and we have a recipe for remaining bullish into the Fed decision.  From then on, the plan is to improvise.

The laboratory inside Exodus is operating at peak efficiency heading into May.  All operators have manned their battle stations heading into May and with data as our guide, we are ready to engage.

Exodus members, the latest Strategy Session is live, go check it out and hit me up if you have any questions!

NASDAQ futures are heading into Friday flat after an overnight session featuring normal range and volume.  Price worked sideways after a spike higher during Thursday settlement period, fueled by earnings from Amazon.  At 8:30am annual GDP data were released, worse than expected, and cause little effect to the market.

Also on the economic docket today we have Chicago Purchasing Manager at 9:45am and Baker Hughes rig count at 1pm.

Yesterday we printed a normal variation up that morphed into a double distribution-type trend day during settlement period.  Thursday morning marked the third gap up left behind during the week, including the major gap up Monday following the French election results.

Heading into today my primary expectation is for buyers to work higher, up through overnight high 5597.75 and continue probing all-time highs. Price stalls just beyond 5600 and two way trade ensues.

Hypo 2 sellers push down through overnight low 5582.75 and flush lower, down to 5559.25 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 3 sellers push lower, down to about 5575 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 4 buyers work up through 5600 and continue working higher, into open air as we wrap up the week.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves:

The White House Snapchat account was active Wednesday, going live for the first time since misspelling Education during the ceremonial ‘rolling of the egg’ which took place on the White House lawn the day after christian Easter.  The account came live just in time for a Thursday visit from the President of Argentina, and also the South American country’s very attractive First Lady Juliana Awada.

The snaps leading up to seeing Juliana and Melania walking from the east to the west wing of the White House are rather dumb, as if the person operating the account doesn’t fully understand how to use the platform.  The intern just started taking photos and labeling who was in them:

The story also featured Trump surprising a group of children, who thought they were just sitting on a White House stoop, eating peanut-free sandwiches then lo,from the shadows, a jolly man appeared to greet them.

Right at the last second one of the kids makes a move on the President, sprinting at him before disappearing off the screen—likely tackled and detained by a Blackwater security agent.

Now you are all caught up on the latest snaps from the White House.

NASDAQ futures are starting Thursday gap up after an overnight session featuring normal range and volume.  Price worked higher overnight after briefly poking below the Wednesday low yesterday evening.  At 8:30am a slew of economic data were released including Advance Good Trade Balance (beat), Durable Goods Order (miss), and Initial/Continuing jobless claims (mixed).

Also on the economic agenda today we have Pending Home Sales at 10am and a 7-Year Note auction at 1pm.

Yesterday we printed a normal variation down.  After a brief spike to all time highs shortly after the open, the session was quiet, working sideways with a slight downward drift.

Heading into today my primary expectation is for buyers to work higher, up to test all-time high 5562.50 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 2 sellers work down through overnight low 5534.25, down to 5511.50 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 3 tight chop, range bound from about 5553 to 5527.25.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves: