Markets Move From Feast To Famine—International TTI Slips Into Bear Market Territory

Ulli Market Commentary Contact

Thur pic

[Chart courtesy of MarketWatch.com]

1. Moving the Markets

In an about face from yesterday’s dead-cat-bounce, stocks took a big hit today. Losses across the board were the worst slide in two months. The Dow dropped 1.53%, the S&P 500 fell 1.62% and the Nasdaq trumped all with a 1.94% tumble. Apple (AAPL) was the culprit in the tech stocks’ decline, as a growing backlash is rising against problems consumers are having with Apple’s latest software updates and its new product launches, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Apple’s stock fell 3.8%.

Alibaba added no benefit to today’s decline, due to the fact that Yahoo! (YHOO) slipped 2.33% after revealing that it agreed to a one-year lock-up period that restricts the sale of the remaining ordinary shares it owns in Alibaba (BABA). As I have said before, be careful of post-IPO turbulence!

Not helping matters were geopolitical tensions as Russia started to retaliate in the ever expanding game of economic sanctions.

We did hear some good news today though from Nike. Nike Inc (NKE), the world’s largest sportswear maker reported a 15% jump in quarterly sales, a large portion of which was generated from the World Cup.

All of our 10 ETFs in the Spotlight succumbed to today’s selling and closed lower.

2. ETFs in the Spotlight

In case you missed the announcement and description of this section, you can read it here again.

It features 10 broadly diversified ETFs from my HighVolume list as posted every Monday. Furthermore, they are screened for the lowest MaxDD% number meaning they have been showing better resistance to temporary sell offs than all others over the past year.

Here are the 10 candidates:

MaxDD

All of them, except IOO, are currently in “buy” mode, meaning their prices are above their respective long term trend lines by the percentage indicated (%M/A).

Year to date, here’s how the above candidates have fared so far:

YTD

To be clear, the first table above shows the position of the various ETFs in relation to their respective long term trend lines (%M/A), while the second one tracks their trailing sell stops in the “Off High” column. The “Action” column will signal a “Sell” once the -7.5% point is taken out in the “Off High” column.

3. Domestic Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs)

Our Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) did an about face and headed south with the International TTI slipping into bear market territory. To avoid an immediate whip-saw signal, I will wait a couple of trading days before issuing an “allout Sell signal” for that arena:

Domestic TTI: +1.23% (last close +2.03%)

International TTI: -0.41% (last close +0.65%)

Disclosure: I am obliged to inform you that I, as well as advisory clients of mine, own some of these listed ETFs. Furthermore, they do not represent a specific investment recommendation for you, they merely show which ETFs from the universe I track are falling within the guidelines specified.

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