Trading SPX Cycles

[vicorka]

The S&P 500 has been in the sideway range between $2040 and $2134 since February 4 of 2015. This is 4.4% range if you count it from the bottom line of this side-way corridor and this is 5-month trend. Last time we had such long side-way trading in January - August of 2011 when S&P 500 index was moving in the range between $1250 and $1370. At that time it was 8 months of the side way action. The same as now, it was about 100-120 points range. The only difference, in 2011 it was 9.6% range and now it is only 4.4% range.

In August of 2011 the S&P 500 index exited this side-way corridor by crashing down to $1090 which is 20% from the high at $1370. I an not telling that we will have 20% correction down, however, taking into account that we had strong steady uptrend without any decent corrections on the S&P 500 for several years (since 2011), we should not disregard such possibility.

So far, it is difficult to expect a deep correction when volatility remains at low levels. The low volatility is the sign tat majority investors are still confident - they are not in panic yet.

Right now, still the majority of the S&P 500 stocks (279 stocks) are traded closer to their 52-week highs. See at
SPX - High-Low Range Chart

On the other hand, since May 29, 2015 majority of the stocks from the NYSE Composite index are traded closer to their 52-week lows - they are clearly bearish. Today it is 1108 bullish (stocks traded closer to their 52-week highs) versus 1688 bearish (stocks closer to their 52-week lows). See at
NYA - High-Low Range Chart
Last time such high number of bearish stocks on the NYSE was seen in October of 2014 when the NYSE composite index had 11% correctional move down.

We may say that the strongest US stocks which are listed in the S&P 500, DJI and Nasdaq 100 indexes still hold the market, yet, the rest of the market is quite uncertain. The Dow Jones Utilities index already declined almost 15%. The Dow Jones Transport is also 13% down and it does not look like any of this indexes are going to reverse up. This was not the case in 2011. At that time we had a side-way range trading across all indexes. Now, we have oil, gas, materials, utilities and transportation market sectors in a decline. Somebody may argue with it, but look at those indexes charts - the indexes covering these sectors are in decline and they are in decline not for just a couple of months.

I an not stating that the market will crash tomorrow. We are entering the summer season and we still could have "lazy" side-way trading. Yet, I think that should we have negative Greece output, it could trigger a strong correction. The decline on June 29th show that the market has a room to slide down and it does need high trading volume to do it - strong decline on that date did not generate strong volume surge - it tells us that there are not a lot of bullish trades ready to jump in and to stop a decline.