ChartSmarter Monday Game Plan 12/21/15

Markets suffered some strong volatility this week and as the old adage goes, “its not where you start but where you finish”. The week began brilliantly after some brief early Monday weakness and after Wednesday the S&P 500 was up 3% and looking to recapture ugly losses the prior week of 3.8%. For the week the S&P 500 FELL .4%, its second unsightly weekly CLOSE in a row. The benchmark is now making a series of lower highs and lower lows since the 11/3 high, whose week concluded a good looking 6 week winning streak. The index is now lower by 2.6% YTD and its 3 year winning streak, all by double digits I may add, appears over. Volume for the week of course skewed by expiration Friday, was the second highest weekly trade of the year. The Nasdaq slipped .2% but do not be fooled by the pedestrian figure as it finished 165 handles off its weekly high (the prior week CLOSED more than 200 handles off intraweek highs). For the moment its 3.9% gain in 2015 appears safe, to keep its own 3 year winning streak alive. AAPL woes continue as it has dropped more than 11% the last 2 weeks and is now in bear market mode off 21% from recent 52 week highs. Its 6 year winning streak could be in jeopardy. Perhaps some good news is that the last 3 times it fell for the year (lost 71.1% in ’00, 34.6% in ’02 and 56.9% in ’08) it rallied the very next year by 47.2% in ’01, 49.1% in ’03 and 146.9% in ’09. At the moment however some tough times appear ahead as we examine its weekly chart below. Of course other developments this week was the Fed hiking rates for the first time in 9 years, oil seemingly under relentless pressure as crude is off 17% this month thus far, and Gold feels to me to be finally be acting like the safe haven it used to be. Friday completed a bullish morning star pattern with Thursdays low bouncing almost precisely at the round par figure.