Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The expected rally has lead to an initial short term overbought signal

From last post I was looking for a rally to occur but this rally has turned out to be much stronger than I anticipated. Of the major indexes, the Nasdaq and the SP500 has recovered to make new 52 week highs while the Dow and Russell 2000 haven't accomplish this feat yet. As the chart illustrates each of the last 3 short term oversold buy signals lead to at least a month long rally. And in a medium term bull market that was signaled in late November 2012, the initial short term overbought sell signals had not hindered the upward thrust when the sell signals occurred. So should this week's sell signal be ignored again? Usually each successive sell signals will add more individual stocks into a more severe correction that will eventually include the major indexes when the medium term trend ends. For now, better to be cautious of individual stocks by switching to the ETFs of the major indexes. One concern I do have is that only the Dow has not touched its 50 day moving average yet this year (as indicated by the blue line in the chart.) The other three major indexes, the Nasdaq, SP500, and Russell 2000 have touched their 50DMAs. On average they touch their 50DMAs within 3 month or less and for the Dow it is currently 4 months. This is the longest since 1995 when it took 6 1/2 months before the Dow retouched its 50DMA which at that time was a great period to be in the stock market during its bull market run.