ChartSmarter Friday Game Plan 3/6/15

Markets eked out some small gains Thursday as both the Nasdaq up .3% and S&P 500 higher by .1% went into negative territory just after lunch briefly. For the week headed into Friday the Nasdaq is higher by .4% and frankly would look much better with a CLOSE above the 5000 number which has happened only once on Monday. The index is looking for its 5th consecutive weekly advance. The S&P 500 is lower by .2% but looks very comfortable a percent and a half above its recent double bottom breakout trigger above 2065. Leading groups Thursday emanated from the defensive as utilities led along with consumer staples. Perhaps investors are searching for yield and although they look ripe, the slope which the utilities have dropped looks troublesome to me. Sure they can bounce off oversold conditions but not sure how long that would last. The staples group was powered in part by COST (9th largest component in the XLP) reporting earnings this morning and gaining almost 3%. CL is trading at all time highs and today WMT was up better than 1%. WMT is the 3rd largest component in the XLP and below is how we examined WMT, exactly how it was written in our Tuesday Game Plan on 2/23. Wednesday it closed 3 pennies above the intraday low of the bullish piercing pattern that occurred on 2/20 keeping the play intact.