Year End Wrap Up - 12312023

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Hello, everyone.

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It's Stephen Whiteside here from TheUpTrend.com.

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I hope everyone's having a wonderful weekend.

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This is the last day of 2023, so I thought I'd do a little recap video.

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We don't have anything planned for New Year's.

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We're going to stay home with a couple of

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nice bottles of wine and just enjoy the evening.

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We're not big on going out on New Year's

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Eve, so not going to get into too much trouble tonight.

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For 2023, the best performing stock on the TSX Composite was Celestica.

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The worst stock was First, Quantum.

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Then looking at the S&P 500, the big winner, of course, was NVIDIA .

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NVIDIA ran up to $500 during the summer and hasn't been able to get anywhere since

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then, but it is still up near $500, closed at $495.22. The worst performing stock on

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the S&P 500 this year was Enphase, down a little over 50% on the year.

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Now, out of the three major indices that we follow on a daily basis, the TSX was

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the worst performer, up a little over 8% on the year.

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And like all the major indices, all the gains came in the last nine weeks of the

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year, and we'll look at why that was in a couple of minutes.

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126 stocks on the TSX Composite ended the year positive.

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One was unchanged and 97 stocks ended the year lower.

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For the S&P 500, which includes those big

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cap tech stocks that everybody was following was up over 24%.

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323 stocks were positive, 178 stocks ended the year negative.

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And then, of course, those big cap tech

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stocks are concentrated in the Nasdaq 100, which was up over 53%.

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80 stocks ended the year higher, while only 20 ended the year lower.

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Now, seasonally, we were anticipating a year end rally.

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We got that. Month end turned out pretty good.

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Automatic money comes in at the end of the month.

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Traders don't usually like to trade against that.

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We did see some tax loss selling over the

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past few days, but not enough to give us any major sell signals.

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Now, we were fear-free for 9 weeks, and it was during those nine weeks that most of

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the gains for the year were made, and that is going to continue.

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We are going to remain long-term bullish

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on the market as long as the VIX does not close above 15.71 this coming Friday.

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Now, if you're a short-term trader, we did get a buy signal in the VIX,

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so we did see some tax loss selling, but not enough to push the markets over.

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The major indices are all still on buy signal, so that has not changed.

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If you're a short-term trader, we're going to remain short-term bullish on the market

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as long as the VIX does not close above 13.31 on Tuesday.

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Now, over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about the fact that there's

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many people doing what's called Panic Buying.

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Of course, Panic Buying is when a trend is coming to an end.

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Currently, the SPY ETF is on the weekly chart is ranked a 10.

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No Early Warning Signals so far.

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An Early Warning Signal usually comes when we close below the previous week's low.

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We haven't done that yet, so there's really no sign of weakness so far.

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Just if you jump in at this point, you're taking on an enormous amount of risk.

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Now, on the daily chart, we're ranked at nine.

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We have had an early warning signal so far

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that has not been enough to give us a Sell signal.

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You can see we dropped down to the upper

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channel line for a couple of days and then started to move back up.

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On Friday, we closed right above the upper

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channel line, but we did touch the upper channel line during the day.

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So for short term traders who are following the money, we're looking for a

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close on Tuesday below $470.61. If that doesn't happen, that lower channel

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line is going to continue to move higher daily.

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Now, for more conservative investors who

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are watching the market daily and need more evidence, so short term price action

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isn't enough, they probably want to see some negative headlines.

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They probably want to mull things over over a weekend, so they need a couple more

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days of downward pressure before they're motivated enough to sell.

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We're looking for a close on Tuesday below 4:65.

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Now, for longer term investors who are not

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trading the market, they're going to be using weekly charts.

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Right now, the weekly Right Side chart is telling us that we need a close below

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$446.94. Of course, that's not going to happen this

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Friday, so that lower channel line is going to continue to move higher weekly,

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and more conservative long-term investors are going to need a close below $440.

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Again, that's not going to happen this

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week, so that tether line is going to continue to move higher weekly.

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Now, if we do get a pullback at some

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point, the market is going to be looking at a couple of things.

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First of all, will the S&P hold the summer high?

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Or if that breaks, they're going to be looking to see if the fall-low will hold

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the market, and that'll take us back down to the bottom of the Fly Paper channel.

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That's a major pullback, but it's not the end of the world.

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If we can get a pullback to that level,

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that would be a good spot to look for new buying opportunities.

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But of course, we're not there yet.

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We haven't started to move down.

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The first sign that something new is

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happening is going to be a close below the previous week's low.

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Of course, that hasn't happened yet.

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Now, this is the point in the presentation

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where I open my book of 2024 and tell you my predictions for the year.

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That's really not going to happen.

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I can give you 101 reasons why the market

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is going to go up in 2024, and I can give you 101 reasons why it's going to go down.

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At the end of the day, I'm here to Follow

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The Money not to try to anticipate what's going to happen.

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I'm here to look at the evidence of what's happening and deal with that evidence.

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I can make predictions.

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You can make predictions. I can make predictions.

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But at the end of the day, that's probably not going to help me make any money.

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Now, the Magnificent Eight is still going

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to be magnificent, but most of the wind is already out of these stocks, and everybody

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knows about them, and most of the gains have been made.

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They're still going to play a major role in the market, but they're not going to

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make as many headlines in 2024 as they did in 2023.

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That's not a prediction. That's just what generally happens.

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But they are huge, massive companies, and

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we'll still hear about them every single day.

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Now, what we're going to have to keep an eye on, if the US dollar turns around and

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starts moving higher, that could hurt the stock market.

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Of course, if bonds start falling, that's going to put upward pressure on bond

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yields, and we don't want to see that happen.

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There are some external things that can happen that can hurt the market,

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especially from currencies and from the bond market.

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Remember, the bond market is much bigger than the stock market.

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When the bond market moves, the stock market really doesn't have any

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choice but to move in the opposite direction.

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Now, seasonality-wise, you can see in the

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S&P 500 down here, we usually get a pullback in January,

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another little run up in February, and then a major pullback in March.

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Not looking for a lot of love in the first

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quarter of 2024 from the seasonality charts.

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For the TSX, it doesn't look very good for January at all.

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In February, we get that retirement money.

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All that money going into the RSP accounts usually help move the market up.

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That money often goes into the most

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conservative stocks, so into the financial sector for sure.

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Then we get a pullback in March.

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A little more love for the TSX in

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February, but again, we get a pullback in March.

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That's what the seasonality charts tell us.

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The seasonality charts, of course, are

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just averages over the long term, and they don't dictate exactly what's going to

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happen, but they give us a good guidepost to what could happen in the future.

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Now, when we look at the percentage of stocks on the S&P 500 currently

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trading above their 200-day moving average, we still have some room to go.

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That is giving the bulls a target up there.

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But when we look at a shorter term chart,

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so this is the percentage of stocks in the S&P 500 currently above their 50-day

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moving average, you can see we are up at the top of the range.

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You look for lower risk buying opportunities down at the bottom here.

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We look for low risk selling opportunities up at the top here.

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If we overlay the S&P 500 on this chart, you can see that when we get up to that

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level, that's usually where we start to pull back.

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Of course, you can pull back from lower

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levels than we are now, but right back here, the indicator was way up here, and

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you can see the market topped and pulled back.

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That's what we're looking for going into January.

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This is a very high risk time and place to put long term money into the market.

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Then looking at the percentage of stocks on the TSX currently trading above their

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50-day moving average, again, we're up at the top of the range.

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Now, it's no guarantee that on Tuesday,

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the market is going to pull back and pull back for weeks at a time.

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But the law of averages tell us that this

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is not the time and place to be putting money into the stock market.

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Let's finish off today's presentation

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looking at a couple of monthly price targets.

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For the SPY, we're up at the previous highs from 2021.

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If we're going to continue higher from

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here, we're just less than $25 away from hitting $500.

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If the market still wants to stretch

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higher, that could certainly be our next target.

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Now looking at the Nasdaq-100, which has

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led the market higher, again, we're up at the previous highs.

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We've hit the 406.25 level.

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We closed three dollars and change above that on Friday.

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If we continue higher from here, 437.50 would be our next monthly target.

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Then looking at the iShares for the TSX 60, if we want to go back up to the

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2021 highs, then 34.38 would be our next target.

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You can see we petered out just below that level back a couple of years ago.

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Three legitimate price targets to the

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upside if the market wants to continue to move higher from here.

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Okay, thank you very much, everyone, for your time and attention.

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I really appreciate your support and wish you and your family all the best in 2024.

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