Special Bulletin: June 29th, 2018

During the past week, as we neared the celebration of our great nation’s independence, our stock markets displayed fireworks of their own. Sharp downdrafts followed by light volume recovery bounces, however, did not instill bravery in the actions of many institutions. One could have thought they heard someone singing “…the quote machines red glare, the profits bursting in air…” as the major indexes swooned for several days in a row before catching a bit of a bounce on Thursday & Friday to end out the month and the first half of 2018.

No doubt, this period will go down in the history books as one plagued by fears of the effects of difficult medicines being administered to a rapidly strengthening economy. With rising corporate profits, historically low unemployment nationally, and lower income taxes coming for most of us, the time to address serious issues (North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, awful trade deals of past administrations, and unfair trade practices by China that are siphoning away our nations wealth month by month) arrived as the President set out to keep his campaign promises and to “make America great again”. I remember hearing about a book years ago by the Harris brothers entitled “Do Hard Things”. Maybe President Trump read that book?

While the outlook for the 2nd half of 2018 remains bright, the stock markets immediate future is uncertain and still at a crossroads. Our official Current Market Outlook remains in a “yellow” condition defined as “Uptrend Under Pressure. Our 3 stage sell-signal discipline closed the week at stage 1 out of a possible 3 stages. During the week our proprietary signal had worsened to a stage 2, but improved back to stage 1 the very next trading day. Buyers did emerge at the precise moment that they should have in order to keep the uptrend intact. So far so good.

The next 2 weeks will be very telling and may likely usher in a meaningful new direction, other than sideways, in the US stock markets.

Stay tuned & have a Triumphant day! ®