Special Risk Capital Management LLC

Weak Markets in a Trading Range August 24, 2019

Aug. 23, 2019 – First a short note:  I’ll be away from my office for the next 4 weeks.  In the past 5 years I haven’t missed a weekly report, but . .  that may happen over the next month.  Plus my posts will likely be rather short; so just a “heads up”.

Markets that are weak tend to react (or over react) to bad news, while strong markets usually ignore the news.  With just a few minutes of his time and one “tweet”, Trump can send the market down over 2%.  Bamb !  Not to get political, but this action shows just how on edge many investors are.  And, the algo computers continue to amplify any significant move.  This is a hard market to trade.  A look at the chart below shows the trading range that I believe we are in.  (click on the graphic to enlarge)

As a Wykoffian I’ve labeled the Buying Climax (bc), Selling Climax (sc), Automatic Rally (ar) and the Secondary Test (st).  The reaction at the top of the range on narrow bars and very light volume showed that there was no demand; i.e. no buying interest at that level.  Friday was a large bar down on heavy volume.  The next thing to watch is how this market acts around the 7643 level.  Do investors see this as a “buy the dips” opportunity or does the selling continue?

Again, we’ll analyze the spread of the daily bar and the volume behind it (effort = volume and ease = price action).  Effort with little Ease of Movement (price movement) tells us that buying (or selling) pressure is being absorbed and change is likely to happen next.  The other scenario is that we just continue to trade with little conviction between 8041 and 7643 until after Labor Day, or another piece of news crosses the wire.  In any case right now there is no clear trend in the near term.

Looking at the table below we note that defensive sectors are at the top of the list.  (note that these ranks are short term based)

I am holding a few stocks that so far are doing well compared to the general market, but also I have a light hedge on via being short the NASDAQ 100 & Small Cap Indexes.  I’m keeping an eye on a few mutual funds and will scale out to Cash if they show weakness relative to the overall market.  So far, they are doing OK.

That’s it for now.  Have a good week.       ……….  Tom  ……..

Price chart by MetaStock; pie chart & table by http://www.HighGrowthStock.com. Used with permission.