Treading Water

Ulli Market Commentary Contact

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[Chart courtesy of MarketWatch.com]
  1. Moving the Markets

Quiet holiday trading took over with the major indexes vacillating slightly above and below their respective trend line without clear direction and again on low volume. The exception was gold, which finished a 5-day winning streak by adding a solid +1.59% for the day.

The dollar gave back some of its recent gains and surrendered -0.52%, which was its strongest pullback since November 1st. Interest rates dropped with the 10-year Treasury now yielding 2.49% down from 2.6% early in December.

Oil slipped on a rise in inventories, weekly jobless claims fell and the preliminary reading for the trade deficit unexpectedly widened. There is only one trading day left this year for the Dow to reach the much anticipated and talked about 20k level, but right now that goal remains elusive.

  1. 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:

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The above table simply demonstrates the magnitude with which some of the ETFs are fluctuating in regards to their positions above or below their respective individual trend lines (%M/A). A break below, represented by a negative number, shows weakness, while a break above, represented by a positive percentage, shows strength.

For hundreds of ETF choices, be sure to reference Thursday’s StatSheet.

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

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Again, 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 has been taken out in the “Off High” column.

  1. Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs)

Our Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) inched higher by a small margin as equities were directionless.

Here’s how we closed 12/29/2016:

Domestic TTI: +1.16% (last close +1.08%)—Buy signal effective 4/4/2016

International TTI: +1.91% (last close +1.79%)—Buy signal effective 7/19/2016

Disclosure: I am obliged to inform you that I, as well as my advisory clients, own some of the ETFs listed in the above table. 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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