Quarter Ends - Our Performance and Macro Market View Going Forward

Published on September 29, 2017 @ 7:56am

Good Friday all. We've got another new all-time high on the S&P 500, and it appears the NASDAQ Composite is soon to follow. This shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you, as we've been pointing to this event even since the NASDAQ Composite bounced off the 6,360 level on Monday when much of the trading world out there was starting to get a little concerned.

That's what you pay us for though - accurate leading market analysis from day-to-today, along with identifying individual stocks and ETF's our research indicates should start performing well soon.

As we come to a close for the third quarter of the year today, we've closed out 20 individual company ideas during the last three months for a cumulative gain of 359% and an average gain per idea of 18% - and yes that includes the one big black eye in VSAR.

As for the ideas we've suggested since July 1st that are still currently open, we've issued 13 individual company ideas that have yielded a cumulative pick return of 70% - which includes a few that are modestly down - for an average gain of just over 5% each, and we still expect those ideas to continue to perform well. This is assuming of course the NASDAQ and S&P 500 achieve our upside targets of 6,600 and 2,558 respectively in the weeks ahead.

Additionally, the above results do not include any index and/or commodity calls and ETF trading ideas we put out there on a regular basis, as we typically don't encourage individuals trade too actively on a short-term basis.

However, we do have many professionals who rely on our daily market commentary to help them achieve good short-term trading results with respect to near-term market direction and sector based trading, so we'll always continue to provide our market prowess every day exactly as we see it.

At this point, we're still very cautiously optimistic about the possibility of new market highs in the weeks ahead. Tech is finally starting to behave better, and the entire small cap sector has also seen a big lift this week - one that confirms these markets are still maintain a risk-on mentality.

The entire small cap sector had pretty much been consolidating all year in fairly volatile fashion up until this week when the Russell 2000 Small Cap Index broke out handily. You can see here the Index has now managed to break new ground to the upside. And, considering the year-long consolidation the Index had to endure prior to this week's breakout, the technical move does add further context to an ongoing bullish environment for equities.

The earnings landscape continues to remain attractive, long-term monetary policy isn't likely to change much, unemployment is down and the markets have gotten pretty used to modest GDP and new job growth - numbers that have become accepted to be somewhat slow steady growth.

We'll also point out consumer confidence has increased and stabilized over the last three years. Nothing earth shattering, but still consistently higher than in previous years, as evidenced by the chart below.

Although job participation still remains historically low, it has also stabilized in recent months. However, we do attribute much of the low job participation rate to retiring boomers, an increasing number of self-employed individuals, and a growing number of contract workers on a 1099 basis. That's just the new economy.

All in all, although the financial media does everything they can to sway investor thinking on a day-to-day basis - whether it be what Trump has or hasn't done, as well as North Korea concerns - the markets just really don't seem to care all that much. Except for sector moves these days, which continue to rotate in and out of favor based on news coming from the current administration.

The bottom line is we still have fundamental and technical reason to believe these markets are likely headed higher. We do believe at some point there's going to be a big rotational shift strongly favoring commodities in the years ahead, but for now it's still all about equities.

Actions To Consider Today:

Trail any substantial gains in any individual ideas with protective stops.

Hold XOP and trail gains with an increasing protective stop.

Hold XLB and trail gains with an increasing protective stop.

Individual Company Updates:

None

If you have any questions or would like further details regarding any of the information provided above - or anything else you're thinking about buying or selling out there - please don't hesitate to call your Rep . at 619-369-9316.