ChartSmarter Friday Game Plan 3/18/16

Markets continued their march northward as the Dow went positive on the year, the S&P 500 is now UNCH in 2016 and the Nasdaq which has lagged but is making amends is lower by 5% YTD. Thursday it was the the S&P 500 leading the way with a .7% advance and the Nasdaq added .2%. For the week headed into Friday the S&P 500 is up 1% and looking at a 5th consecutive week CLOSING at the top of the weekly range. The Nasdaq has gained .7% for the week with one session to go. Last week it had the major hurdle of the ECB and this week was the Fed in the spotlight and those worries of the wall are no in the rearview mirror. How many more major worries does the market have to climb? Will it pause here or begin a retreat? In recent years investors have become accustomed to V shaped rallies which have been severe. As optimists many focus of the recovery but one has to remember V shaped up moves are accompanied by strong V shaped declines as well. The best of traders remain optimistic but they narrow in very closely on not how much they can make, but more importantly how much will they potentially lose and trade accordingly (VIX now with a 14 handle). Energy and materials were the leaders Thursday, I know hard to believe, with both gaining more than 2%, with the latter closer to 3%. We discussed retail yesterday a bit and its unwillingness to attend the indexes party and again we saw 2 names report earnings today, GES and WSM, and they slumped 15 and 6% respectively (to be balanced LE, a former spinoff of Lampert’s SHLD rose 4% today). As consumers make up 2/3rd’s of GDP now the very low readings in the 1-2% range make perfect sense. AZO which we profiled in Wednesday’s Game Plan is below and it to shied away from the markets dance floor Thursday. It recorded a bearish shooting star candle Tuesday and it is down everyday this week thus far.