Stocks Start Off The Week Sub-Par As Oil Prices Fall

Ulli Market Commentary Contact

Mon pic

[Chart courtesy of MarketWatch.com]

1. Moving the Markets

The markets ended the day somewhat mixed as the S&P dropped 0.3%, but stayed above the 2000 mark. The Dow also fell 0.2%, while the Nasdaq gained a slight 0.2%

In corporate news, Yahoo (YHOO) shares rose 5.6% after we heard today that Alibaba filed for its initial public offering and started its investor ‘road show.’ Remember, Yahoo owns a 23% stake in Alibaba!

Also, we heard today that General Mills (GIS) announced it will acquire organic food producer Annie’s (BNNY) for around $820 MM. Best known for its the rabbit-shaped mac and cheese, Annie’s reported $204 million in net sales during its latest fiscal year, up about 20 percent from a year earlier.

The oil industry stole a couple of headlines today. Even with geopolitical tensions as high as they have been over the past couple of months, the price of oil has been coming down. Brent crude fell below $100 a barrel for the first time in 16 months today, supposedly driven lower by the fall in China’s growth in imports.

Two of our 10 ETFs in the Spotlight closed up and made new highs at the same time.

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 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) came off their highs and closed as follows:

Domestic TTI: +2.79% (last close +3.00%)

International TTI: +2.23% (last close +2.69%)

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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