Stock Market Turns Ugly

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

This blog advised getting out of the market early last week. Those who sold were quite happy they did yesterday. The main U.S. indices were down between 2.4% and 3.9%. Europe and Asia got hit as well, but were down somewhat less than the U.S. The media is sighting a World Bank report forecasting that the global economy would shrink 2.9% this year instead of the 1.7% they had previously predicted (who woke them up?). The markets were technically weak and were set up for a fall no matter what happened though.

The Dow, although the weakest of the U.S indices, had the smallest drop of 2.4%. The Dow had closed below its 200-day moving average all five days last week and then demonstrated further weakness by closing below its 50-day moving average yesterday. The 50-day is below the 200-day in a typical bear market pattern. The Nasdaq on the other hand has the 50-day above the 200-day in a typical bull market pattern and is the strongest of the major indices by far. It dropped 3.3% yesterday, but closed above its 50-day and 200-day, still a healthy picture in contrast to the sickly looking Dow.

The S&P 500 and the small cap Russell 2000 have a different picture altogether. Both have the 50-day close to the 200-day and are trying to change from a bear market to bull market pattern. The 50-day crossing the 200-day from below is usually considered a buy signal, but it is not working out in this case because the technical indicators are turning down. The 50-day had already slightly crossed the 200-day for the Russell 2000 and they are touching each other for the S&P. The Russell had the biggest drop yesterday, falling 3.9%. It closed below the 50-day and right on its 200-day. The S&P dropped 3.1% and closed just below the strong support offered by the joined 50-day, 200-day. Breaking strong support is never a good sign technically.

One of the worst hit groups yesterday was oil drillers. Take a look at PDS, often mentioned in this blog. The triple leveraged ETF for oil companies, ERX also had a large drop yesterday after already selling down for the previous seven days. Light sweet crude closed at 67.50 yesterday, but was as low as 66.37 in Asian trading last night. I am looking for oil to hit support in the 58-62 range. Oil companies started selling off before oil did and in all likelihood they will be rallying before oil hits bottom.

I will be briefly discussing the current state of the market at the Fundamental Class tonight. See our webite for details.

NEXT: Technical Damage Continues; Fed Decision Today

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21


This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.