Fed Walks Fine Line Between the Short-Term & Long-Term

by David Brown, Chief Market Strategist, Sabrient Systems

The market continues to defy gravity, and every small attempt by the bears to push it down – even in this moderate-volume trading environment – is swatted aside like a pesky mosquito and limited to one-day non-events. And now the market has its sights set on new 2010 highs, and it might just get there before some much needed profit-taking and support-testing sets in.

Big Earnings Week Starts Off Slowly

by David Brown, Chief Market Strategist, Sabrient Systems

The market continues to try to suck in bears who are itching to short a rally that is long on optimism but short on volume and fundamental underpinnings. But each time it appears that a correction of significance is ready to start, a bid arrives with the slimmest of justification to sends the market to new heights. Despite market exuberance, my own technical analysis of the charts and Sabrient’s SectorCast-ETF fundamentals-based quantitative ranking of the ten U.S. sector iShares are both telling me that there is still much to worry about.

Nervous Market Begins New Quarter

by David Brown, Chief Market Strategist, Sabrient Systems

After last week’s Sector Detector article in which I talked about the “relentlessly strong September” making the market quite overbought from a technical standpoint, it looked like the market was going to waterfall into a healthy correction on Thursday. But alas, the bulls pulled a rabbit out of their hat and closed the week with a flourish.

Seeking a New Catalyst

by David Brown, Chief Market Strategist, Sabrient Systems

The market sputtered into negative territory today (Monday), with the S&P 500 closing at 1142 (-0.57%). Still, the index is well above the 50-day and 200-day moving averages.

A relentlessly strong September is making the market quite overbought from a technical standpoint. So much for September being historically the worst month of the year for stocks. But it now appears to be at a crossroads. And Sabrient's quantitative SectorCast rankings are even more defensive this week.

The market is off to a great start this week, powered by last week's momentum and further buoyed by a lessening of fears about Europe's sovereign debt. All the major indices are above their 50-day and 200-day moving averages, with the S&P 500 finally breaking out of the 1120 resistance level, closing today at 1141, a new 4-month high. As an interesting historical aside, the 1120 resistance level was first encountered way back in April 1998.

The ragged summer of 2010 is history, thank you very much, but despite an improved outlook for the economy, September drifted forward on very low trading volume last week, probably due to the holiday-shortened week (Labor Day on Monday and Rosh Hashanah on Thursday and Friday). The few economic reports we saw last week were positive, including slightly improved initial jobless claims, and the outlook improved for European banks.