Good Evening, The market opened in the red and worked all day to come off those lows only to sell back into the red during the last hour. Although, they didn’t do as well in March as they did during the first two months of the year, the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P all posted great gains for the first quarter. Although, the market has been slightly on the negative side for the past several weeks, many internal indicators that I watch are surprisingly bullish. For example, one of my favorite bullish indicators is the ratio of the consumer discretionary sector verses the consumer staples sector. If it rises the market is bullish, if it falls the market is bearish. There are several such technical indicators that I watch but this one is my favorite because it is one of the most accurate predictors of the direction that the market will move. I chart this ratio using the Spider sector funds XLY (Consumer Discretionary) and XLP (Consumer Staples). For those who may not know, Discretionary items are items such as cars and television sets and Staple items are items such as food and toothpaste. The XLY and XLP are composed of companies that manufacture and distribute these items. You can check those out for yourselves. What is relevant here is the chart and what it tells us. Here it is:
XLY:XLP : As you can see the ratio has become very bullish in the past two weeks. What does this tell me? We could be in for a good April!
The days trading left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment slipped -0.14%. For comparison, the Dow lost -0.31%, the Nasdaq -0.04%, and the S&P 500 -0.23%.
Stocks Post Strong First-Quarter Gains as Nasdaq Rockets 10%; Dow Jumps Nearly 5%
The months action left us with the following signals: C-Neutral, S-Buy, I-Buy, F-Neutral. We are currently invested at 100/I. Our allocation is now +3.10% on the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results:
| 03/30/17 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 15.2752 | 17.5887 | 32.8212 | 42.7997 | 26.5367 |
| $ Change | 0.0010 | -0.0319 | 0.0972 | 0.2258 | 0.0149 |
| % Change day | +0.01% | -0.18% | +0.30% | +0.53% | +0.06% |
| % Change week | +0.04% | -0.05% | +1.05% | +1.79% | +0.52% |
| % Change month | +0.20% | -0.14% | +0.34% | -0.25% | +3.34% |
| % Change year | +0.58% | +0.80% | +6.31% | +4.40% | +7.86% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 18.7351 | 25.2128 | 27.9833 | 30.0769 | 17.2203 |
| $ Change | 0.0086 | 0.0249 | 0.0434 | 0.0553 | 0.0368 |
| % Change day | +0.05% | +0.10% | +0.16% | +0.18% | +0.21% |
| % Change week | +0.23% | +0.43% | +0.64% | +0.75% | +0.85% |
| % Change month | +0.37% | +0.57% | +0.78% | +0.87% | +0.97% |
| % Change year | +1.76% | +3.00% | +4.28% | +4.90% | +5.48% |
