Good Evening,
No doubt about it. Today was a classic sell the news market. The news catalyst was the massive Alibaba IPO. While it is an irritation to be sure, I don’t consider it a trend breaker. It’s more of a bump in the road. Unless something fundamentally changes in the coming weeks the trend is still up and we must honor it. We have a system and we’ll stick to it. That is, to react to what our charts tell us, and so far today is not a deal breaker. As of this writing, both TSP and AMP are off, mostly due to a large dip in small caps. However, we will leave small caps (for TSP the S Fund) in our allotments as they normally start out performing large caps in late October or early November and do so through the end of the year. Historical data tells us that small caps out perform large caps 75 to 100% of the time during these months. Many traders refer to it as the “January effect” although it seems like January comes earlier each year… This is another good example of why it is good to maintain a balanced portfolio. I will be leaving early for a car show this evening so the final results are not in, but barring a miracle buying spree, both TSP and AMP will post moderate losses on the day. Also worth mentioning is the fact that today is quadruple witching day. Without getting into a large explanation of this phenomena, many shares change hands as a result of it and the effects only last for a day or so. All that said, we could spend next week drifting sideways with a negative bias, as there isn’t really any market changing news scheduled for the week. Of course, we’ll keep an eye on the charts for any curve balls.
US stock indexes turn mixed in afternoon trading
afterChinese e-commerce giant Alibaba debuts
09/18/14 | |||||
Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
Price | 14.5263 | 16.3959 | 26.383 | 35.5312 | 26.0293 |
$ Change | 0.0008 | -0.0112 | 0.1323 | 0.1104 | 0.1061 |
% Change day | +0.01% | -0.07% | +0.50% | +0.31% | +0.41% |
% Change week | +0.03% | -0.03% | +1.32% | +0.04% | +0.15% |
% Change month | +0.11% | -1.12% | +0.51% | -1.02% | -1.01% |
% Change year | +1.68% | +4.16% | +10.50% | +5.53% | +1.82% |
L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
Price | 17.3272 | 22.8199 | 24.7398 | 26.3157 | 14.9582 |
$ Change | 0.0156 | 0.0518 | 0.0712 | 0.0863 | 0.0555 |
% Change day | +0.09% | +0.23% | +0.29% | +0.33% | +0.37% |
% Change week | +0.19% | +0.41% | +0.50% | +0.55% | +0.61% |
% Change month | -0.01% | -0.11% | -0.17% | -0.22% | -0.25% |
% Change year | +3.04% | +4.70% | +5.46% | +5.97% | +6.36% |
