Weekly Risk Report 03/16/2009
The strong close to last week’s market surprised some market participants. Surprise and delight was probably the reaction from those who have invested for the long term. Surprise and some in trepidation probably greeted some of the short sellers. In any case, all that good news made for only a small change in the i-Wave risk level. It actually fell another point with two components down, one up and one unchanged. The IW Oscillator also continues to show the weakness of previous weeks rather than last week’s rally.
Even with the bold upward moves there were only 26 new Highs (last 52 weeks) showing for all 6300 stocks on the NASDAQ Composite and the NYSE. There were over 1300 new Lows registered last week, so the good stocks are still being overwhelmed by the bad statistically. However, when we look at the Advance/Decline data, we find 5300 stocks advanced compared to about 900 that declined for those two exchanges. So, while not making a lot of new yearly highs, the markets did make a truly bold move. This week so far has shown some healthy short term profit taking along with continued market advances through the Tuesday close.
We maintain our vigil with all portfolios looking for opportunities to profitably capture a portion of the markets’ high volatility. Market dividend yields are higher than short term treasuries all the way through the 20 year (see last week’s report). Generally this starts to attract money from the sidelines back toward common stocks.
