Weekly Stock Market Commentary 10/3/14

By Lawrence G. McMillan

The stock market, as measured by the Standard & Poors 500 Index ($SPX) has broken down badly this week.  The decline accelerated after breaking through minor support at 1965.  The $SPX chart is now in a downtrend.

One more thing re the $SPX chart: It has been 681 trading days since $SPX last touched the 200-day moving average (on November 20, 2012). This is a record just waiting to be broken.  Perhaps this will be the time.

Equity-only put-call ratios remain on sell signals.  They are racing higher on their charts, and that is bearish.

The breadth indicators are on sell signals, but they have reached severely oversold territory.      Volatility indices are in uptrends, and that is bearish for stocks. Note the rising blue lines on the chart in Figure 4.

In summary, we don't have any true buy signals from our indicators, but the oversold conditions indicate that a short-term rally could take place.  So, we remain intermediate-term bearish (until some true buy signals appear), but are looking for a short-term bounce now.

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