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Data released today shows that house prices fell from the prior month's level and still remain in negative territory, as shown on the graph below. Since it's a "leading indicator of the housing industry's health because rising house prices attract investors and spur industry activity," the weak price levels just confirm the depressed state of new home sales, as mentioned in my post of January 26th.
Further to my post of January 28th, which focused on Weekly charts, I'll take a closer look at near-term support and resistance levels on the shorter Daily timeframe for YM, ES, NQ & TF, as shown on the charts below.
Overlayed on each chart are Bollinger Bands, monthly Volume Profile POC (horizontal yellow lines), 50 sma (red), 200 sma (pink), and a Volume Profile for the one-year period (POC is red horizontal line).
Price on YM is currently trading in between its upper Bollinger Band and middle Bollinger Band, above both POCs, and above both moving averages (which are in a bullish Golden Cross formation). Using these parameters, I'd put near-term resistance at 12761, and support at, first, 12499, then 12377, and, finally, 12195 (one-year POC).
Data released today shows that consumers are buying less, but paying more, even though their personal income has risen, as shown on the three graphs below.
Consumer personal spending has been, generally, declining since it peaked in August 2011. Since "consumer spending accounts for a majority of overall economic activity, and is one of the most important gauges of economic health," it remains to be seen whether this will have any effect on the buying mindset of the equity markets that has been in play for the past couple of months.
Here's how Week 1 closed on January 27th for YM, ES, NQ & TF. This was the week of the FOMC announcement to keep interest rates low until the end of 2014. As I mentioned in my post of January 25th, these four e-min futures indices have been travelling upward in a channel from their 2011 lows.
The first Weekly chart below shows that YM took a slight loss from the prior week after attempting new highs, but closed just above a confluence of 3 trendlines (one from the highs of 2007), a 78.6% Fibonacci extension level, this month's Volume Profile POC (horizontal yellow line), and the lower one-quarter of the channel on higher volumes than the prior week. Current price sits well above its 50 sma (red). The weekly uptrend hasn't been broken yet for YM.
Have the markets started building 2012's chocolate cake for a bullish Christmas tea party? Let's see what foundations have been prepared for the first layer, so far, in January. The following charts and graphs will help me to illustrate this possible scenario.
