US Market Outlook 01292024

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Hello everyone, and welcome to Monday morning.

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It's Stephen Whiteside here from TheUpTrend.com.

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In the pre-market this morning, things are fairly quiet.

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Stock index futures are trading around fair value.

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Gold is higher while crude oil is slightly lower on Monday morning.

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Let's start off this morning with a little

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housekeeping, and we've got a schedule change starting today.

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I'm going to start covering the US markets on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and do a

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deeper dive into the Canadian markets on Tuesday and Thursday.

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So today, we're just going to look at the US market.

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Now, typically, coming into month-end, I

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would tell you to relax, and the market usually has a bullish bias to it, and

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there's no history of the market having a major crash at the end of the month.

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But This month is different.

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We've got a jam-packed week coming up,

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lots and lots of earnings, and we've got a bunch of economic numbers coming out.

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We also have a Fed meeting, and so that's the 30th and 31st.

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That, of course, could add a tremendous amount of

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volatility to the market, depending on what they say.

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This is going to be a very interesting week for the market.

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Now, coming into the market, things are still looking very bullish.

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We're hitting all-time new highs.

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The VIX has been in a tight range for a while now, and looking at a monthly chart

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of the VIX, we know that we're not going to expect a major decline in the stock

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market unless the VIX starts poking over the $20 level.

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On a shorter term time frame, we're going

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to remain long term bullish, so that's using the weekly charts

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on the market as long as the VIX does not close above 14.88 this coming Friday.

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And if you're a short term trader on Monday, we're going to remain bullish on

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the market as long as the VIX does not close above 13.89. Now, the VIX recently

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had a pop, and the market really didn't take too much notice of it.

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Really, we're probably going to have to

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see the VIX poke out above 15 before the market really gets overly concerned.

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The VIX represents how options traders feel about risk in the market.

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Right now, we're pretty neutral, and so not too worried.

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But if you look at the VIX chart, it's rather interesting.

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It's setting up quite a bullish pattern

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where we're making a series of higher highs and higher lows.

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That's usually the sign that a bullish trend is about to start, that it certainly

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hasn't started coming into Monday's trading action.

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Now, the rest of the charts in this

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presentation are going to be weekly charts, and of course, technology,

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just by the weight of this sector, is leading the market higher.

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Might not be in percentage terms, but

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you can see the technology, SPDR ETF, making a new high.

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We had a new high in communication

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services, and a lot of that action last week had to do with Netflix.

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Now, semiconductors were down nearly 2% on

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the week, and that could be a big red flag for the market.

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We'll just have to wait and see.

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We're certainly still on a weekly buy

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signal here, back on a daily sell signal, though.

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If we look, we had a bearish reversal signal a month ago, we put in a lower high

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a month ago, and then last week, we put in another lower high.

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So it'll be interesting if this particular ETF, the XSD, can hold the 203.13 level.

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Going forward, right now, we're still

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stuck up at the 218.75 level, but certainly be a tell if the semiconductors

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started to break down and started to lead the market lower.

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Looking at the Dow, new high for the Dow,

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new high for the S&P 500, new high for the Nasdaq 100.

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The Russell 2000 was up nearly 2% on the week.

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Microcaps were up 2.68% on the week.

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That's all looking bullish.

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Financials made a new high.

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Now, it wasn't on the back of banks that

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were up or regional banks that were up or the broker dealers, of course.

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And what we've been noticing over the past year or so is that it's really the

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insurance companies leading the financial sector higher.

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Energy stocks were the big winner on the week.

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Not enough to give us a weekly buy signal,

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but lots of short term action on the daily charts.

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Let's finish off taking a look at commodities.

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And we had crude oil up.

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It's back on a weekly buy signal.

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The pros haven't taken control yet, but

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let's just say this is week one of an uptrend, and we're looking to see if

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we can repeat something like this from last summer into the fall.

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That would take us up two lines, back up to the $87.50 level.

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That's how I would measure it.

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Of course, we know that we traded above

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that, so there's going to be a lot of people looking for a move up to $90.

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But let's just start with two lines up,

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87.50. That's a reasonable target for crude oil.

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Unfortunately, natural gas was down nearly three and a half %.

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The pros do not look like they're interested in taking control right now.

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That is unfortunate.

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Now, looking at the miners, copper was up nicely on the week.

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Not enough to give us a buy signal.

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Copper miners were up as well.

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Not enough to give us a buy signal.

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The price of gold was down $12.50. No change in trend there, sitting right on

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the edge of a weekly sell signal for the price of gold.

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Since last fall, the price of gold has traded between 1875 and 2125.

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So about 95 % of the trading action has been between those two lines.

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Right in the middle is the big psychological area of support of $2,000.

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So it'll be quite a tell if gold starts breaking down below $2,000.

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Now, gold Gold miners were up on the week.

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Certainly not enough to even get back into the channel.

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We're looking to see if gold can start to turn around.

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It is up in the pre-market this morning, so we'll just have to wait and see.

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Then looking at silver, silver was

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actually up on the week, but it traded all the way down to $22 in bounce.

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$22 is acting as support at the moment.

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Mathematically, it's $21.87 is our mathematical price target.

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If we start breaking down, of course, we

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have the previous lows here from $20.23 that could potentially act as support.

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But if you're looking for a new playing

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field, if we do break down below $21.87, then down to $18.75, that would be our

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playing field, and that would take us back to the lows from 2022.

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We're not there yet. We're just projecting what could happen if

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we start breaking down and we start making lower lows.

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You can see that we recently put in a high.

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It It was actually higher than the

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previous two, but certainly not a retest of the previous high.

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For both gold and silver, we're just

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sitting waiting to see which way the market wants to take them next.

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There's no reason to get excited about

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either of those two areas of the market right now.

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All the focus is on the energy sector.

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Then looking at silver miners, we're up on the week.

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Again, nowhere near a new weekly buy signal.

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Okay, folks, that's all for this morning's presentation.

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It's It's going to be a rather exciting week.

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We're coming in very overbought, and the market may want to take a break.

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In a lot of cases, it might be buy the rumors, sell the news.

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You may see some good earnings reports

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coming out that will cause the market to sell off.

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But again, we'll just have to wait and see.

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Have a great day.

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Next time you'll hear my voice is on Tuesday morning, and at that time, we'll

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take a deeper dive into the Canadian stock market.

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Stock market.

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