Your Economy (No Politics)

[Bullwinkle]

CYCLE turn on/around April 16th

Where to begin? Let's start by mentioning that I got the correct month edited into this weeks post. Last week I do not know what I was thinking by posting March 5th instead of April 5th. I guess I liked the month end so much I didn't want to let it go. Anyway, we had a shortened trading week due to Good Friday and let me wish any and all that happen to read this a Happy Easter.

Now onto business... As I had mentioned in my previous update with which this posts replies (remember, it says March 5th and not April as it should) I was looking for a pull back from the torrid pace we had blazed coming off of the March 24th turn date and as luck would have it we have stalled out. Not a big pullback, but maybe a consolidation phase to alleviate some of those overbought conditions. While I believe this is good for the market I am not so sure we are yet done with this pull back, but a little more on that after I touch on the Eco#'s for the past week.

The Economic #'s, while not all that prevalent this past week were revealed to be fairly good. ISM Services soared, Consumer Debt fell, Import Prices rose and Export Prices remained the same. Jobless Claims fell yet again and Wholsesale Inventories shot up a full percentage point. As for next week we can expect a little more activity; Business Inventories, Retail Sales, Treasury Budget, CPI, Trade Balance, Initial Jobless Claims, PPI? (did not get this one last week), Housing Starts, Capacity Utilization and Industrial Production. Then of course cap it all of we have Options Expiry...

So what can we expect for the coming week? As I alluded to earlier, I do not think we are finished pulling back and believe we could possibly retest the 2000 area on the COMPQ. Then with the turn date of the 16th in effect I believe it will be a low and we continue to rally into month end. At this time I am still not sure if the April 26th turn date will cap the rally or if we will continue into mid-May, but we will review that when the time comes. As I have mentioned many times before I am not in anyway an e-wave specialist and generally do not like to look too far ahead, but in an attempt to expand my horizons I have plotted a COMPQ chart of what I believe to be the outlook for the months ahead. I try to keep it simple and straight forward and while I reserve the right to change my mind on the possible outcome or flow of the chart presented due to the daily market and geo-political forces which far greater than myself, I welcome any critiquing and/or comments about the chart which I have posted. Without it I cannot get better at forecasting further into the future than a week at a time. So please, any comments at all are welcome...