Further to my post of January 27th, I'll offer the following Quarterly timeframe charts of the Dow 30, S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 Indices. There were impressive gains for this year's first quarter…the Dow's range was 1,067.89, the S&P 500's range was 160.29, the Nasdaq's range was 486.44, and the Russell's range was 111.14…they added to the impressive gains made in 2011 Q4…and all were made with barely a pullback on the current candle. They are, however, now trading at major resistance levels.

It's difficult to imagine that Q2 will duplicate this feat without a pullback, but stranger things have happened! I am, however, mindful of my recent posts, so strong vigilance to be on the lookout for developing weakness is the order of the day/next quarter!

So, as I referenced in my post above, I can report that the first layer of the chocolate cake has been whipped up and baked to perfection…we'll see if the rest of the layers and embellishments get added to complete the cake in order to be ready for serving by this Christmas…it all depends on how hungry the bulls are and whether anything distracts them from this delectable tea party…it's not a cheap cake, so the bulls (a ton of them) will have to open their wallets wide from this point on without reservation/hesitation!

http://www.strawberryblondesmarketsummary.com/

There was mixed data released on Friday.

The graphs below show that Personal Spending was up while Personal Income was down…this seems to be a re-occurring theme, as I last reported in my post of March 1st. Add to this the information from my post of March 7th, and it seems that the consumer is headed for disaster. How long it's sustainable is anybody's guess.

(more…)

I've done a couple of posts in the past on "Mr. Fat Finger"…one on April 21, 2011, and the other on December 3, 2011. The following is a brief update.

There are two shaded circles on each of the Weekly charts below of YM, ES, NQ & TF. The first contains the infamous "Fat Finger" day in 2010. The second contains the downdraft following Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating in 2011. For all you wave traders, we may be approaching the final segment of a Wave 5 on the Weekly timeframe. It may be prudent to be prepared for sudden "Fat Finger" downdrafts, particularly if the TF is not able to break out and hold above 2011 highs.

In this regard, the support levels, which coincide with the upper portion of the 2011 downdraft, are 12500 for YM, 1330 for ES, 2420 for NQ…850 represents that level for TF, but it hasn't even closed above it yet, so it's holding as resistance.

(more…)

Data released on Tuesday revealed a decline in manufacturing and consumer confidence, and a rise in the price of single-family homes, as shown on the graphs below.

(more…)

My post of February 23rd contained data showing a decline in Existing Home Sales and in the Purchase Price of Homes with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Data released on March 23rd also showed a decline in New Home Sales, as shown on the graph below.

Data released on March 26th shows a further decline (into negative territory) of Pending Home Sales, as shown on the graph below. Since it's a "leading indicator of economic health because the sale of a home triggers a wide-reaching ripple effect…renovations are done by the new owners, a mortgage is sold by the financing bank, and brokers are paid to execute the transaction," this declining data, along with the declines noted above, do not confirm what the stock markets have been doing.

The stock (and commodity) markets have been going up since 2009, while Existing, New, and Pending Home Sales have basically been stagnant at their 2009 low levels…this is a huge negative divergence.

This is obviously an area that has never been resolved by the Fed's QE 1&2 and Operation Twist programs, nor by the politicians (Republicans and Democrats), since the 2007/08 financial crisis began.

http://www.strawberryblondesmarketsummary.com/