A Blustery January Ahead For Stocks

By Gary Gordon: The S&P 500 set an all-time record high on 10/9/2007. Three weeks earlier, the iShares High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG) had reached its pinnacle, and then promptly began falling from grace.

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: After trending lower for all of 2010, Google (GOOG) finally appears to be coming back to life again.

The LFB submits:As forex traders, in low-volume, high volatility, melt-up and melt-down daily trading environments, it seems that there has never been a more important time to monitor the fundamental driver of each trade that is being considered, and to monitor closely the correlated market movements, regional global market opens and closes, and upcoming macro-economic calendar releases.

Will stocks have a pullback? Eventually sure—but when? This past Friday, May 10, 2013 marked 176 days since a 5%+ pullback in the S&P 500, tying the record for stretches without a pullback in this 50-month-old bull market [Figure 1], so it may be close. Also, in the spring of each of the past three years, a stock market slide of 10–19% began, and the S&P 500 is about 11% above the 200-day moving average, as it was ahead of each of those slides. These indicators suggest the stock market may be due for a pause or a pullback.    

By Hawkinvest:Ford (F) has been a great turnaround story, and I was bullish on the stock back when it was trading at lower levels. However, the stock is well off the 2012 lows, and for a few reasons this stock appears to be a strong sell now. Ford shares are showing signs of weakness and as the chart below shows, it has broken below recent support levels.

In the absence of new, noise-driven events, we can expect that the average of stock prices in the United States as measured by the S&P 500 will rise to a level between 1182 and 1218 in the very near future, with 1200 marking the midpoint of our forecast range.

Richard Suttmeier submits: The yield on the 10-Year tested my annual risk level at 2.813 on Friday. Gold is back above $1200 a Troy ounce. Crude oil is above monthly and annual pivots at $80.02 and $77.05 with a weekly pivot at $81.84 and semiannual risky level at $83.94. The euro should peak at or below the 200-day simple moving average at 1.3536.

The first trading day of the week was a somewhat dreary affair, not unlike the weather in the Northern hemisphere. Following the Christmas day rate hike in China, most major U.S. stock market indices managed to reverse earlier losses and close in the black, albeit only marginally. However, the Dow Jones Industrial Average bucked the trend and remained in the red in a thinly-traded market.