Market bias continued upward last week. More importantly, today’s French presidential election outcome will have an impact on world markets including ours in the week ahead. Macron is expected to prevail, and if so, markets will remain optimistic on EU solidarity (never mind he will lead them further down the current path of cultural and economic decline, but that is an essay for another time). A LePen “upset” would trigger a market sell-off over EU uncertainty, per the experts – but these same pundits got it wrong about Trump, so market movement is difficult to gauge.
Last week was likely a gainful one for diversified subscribers, as stocks finally followed through on sentiment of the week before – most longs continued to rise, most shorts continued to fall (those institutional buyers of the week before obviously knew something). As a result, weekly highs/lows increased in number and trades this week are fewer.
Good to see weeks like this past one, and a reminder that we must always remain fully invested even during sluggish times, as we never know when breakouts will occur and do not want to miss the gains they suddenly provide.
Analytics: A new tool has been added to the analytics decision matrix that back-testing has shown will smooth out some of the smaller “bumps” in price movement, insulating us from unnecessary and unproductive false reversals. It will require us to tolerate somewhat larger price swings while holding our positions, but as with other recent adjustments, should result in fewer trades and fewer unproductive trades. A few trades this week are corrections to bring positions in line with these analytics, which are titled Version 53.
Highlights: 8 new weekly highs in long positions. 5 stocks with double-digit long gains:
TRUE +15% EVH +23% FIVN +39% NEFF +76%
FRPT +20%
5 new weekly lows among short positions. 4 stocks with double-digit short gains:
ERF +17% NGL +28% NPTN +33%
FTK +11%