ChartSmarter Tuesday Game Plan 1/14/14

Markets were in no jolly mood to start the week as the benchmarks fell hard. Both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 fell for the third straight Monday, with today easily being the hardest hit. The Nasdaq took the worst of it falling 1.5% and the S&P 500 lost 1.3%. The S&P 500 is up just 3 days so far in 2014, and is coming up for a 50 day SMA test which lies right at the big round 1800 number. We have been saying all along that retail weakness was trying to tell us something. Add to that the energy frailty and you have an awkward coupling. Normally retail would thrive with energy heading lower, as consumers would have more discretionary income. So form your own assumptions there, but you can not ignore what the tape was trying to convey. In the energy complex you have names like GPOR DO HOS PBR PXD ROSE before today were in their own personal bear markets. In retail we have been pounding the table for every ANF or HELE you have a KSS ZUMZ PSMT LB. The high levels of optimism in the Investor Intelligence surveys have not been spoken to much about lately, but it is hard to brush off the more than 60% of advisers who remain bullish. Going into this weekend the exact number was 60.6%, with the 5 year high being 61.6%. That ratio will probably realign itself by the end of this week.