Friday, August 17, 2007

How Healthy Is the Rally?

I don't have much to add to what has already been said about today's rally.

For what it's worth I am watching three indicators in particular to gauge the health and longer term potential of this rally:
XBD -- broker/dealer index (to a lesser extent XBD:SPX, GS, BSC, BKX, CFC, etc.)
RUT -- Reuters 2000 Small Cap Index (also RUT:SPX)
EEM -- iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (also EEM:EFA)

Right now, all three indicators are outperforming the broad market indices, so I feel as if the rally is on good footing. My biggest concern coming into the day was that would be traders worried about Monday's headline risk, but the longer the indicators noted above continue to do well, the less pressure there will be on the system.

For a little while earlier in the day the markets and the VIX were both up, as fear lingered in the face of a weekend of uncertainty, but for now, the fear component of the VIX seems to be slowly dissipating.

Before I finalize my positions going into the weekend, I will take one last look at Hurricane Dean.

1 comments:

Bill Luby said...

Also, Jim Kingsland has posted an excellent list of what he will be watching most closely in the coming week.

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