ChartSmarter Thursday Game Plan 7/28/16

Markets traded in a bifurcated fashion Wednesday with the Nasdaq clearly outperforming on the back of a well received earnings call by AAPL. The Nasdaq gained .6% while the S&P 500 lagged losing .1%. Among individual groups the bifurcation was easy to spot. The consumer staples and utilities were the laggards with the XLP and XLU falling 1.5 and 1.1% respectively. Leading the way were the XLK and XLV as rotation into those industries has been a recent bullish development. As many names in the tech space are trading near 52 week highs and in some cases all time highs, AAPL still remains 17% off its 52 week highs even with todays stellar of 6.5%. It did manage to CLOSE above its 200 day SMA today and it will need 2 of 3 more sessions finishing above that secular line to convince me that a turnaround is in place. Notice today it filled in the gap to the upside from the 4/26 session and it could meet some resistance here. Energy names were lower today as the XLE was the third worst performer among the major S&P sectors and it has had a positive impact on some names in the retail arena. Gold acted very nicely Wednesday as it has all year long with the GLD up 1.6% today and more than 26% YTD. Below is a name in the miner group, NEM, that we highlighted in our Monday 7/25 Game Plan. We are big proponents of the round number theory and the stock managed to CLOSE above 40 Monday, even as it traded below intraday. Today it broke out above a 3 week tight pattern, a favorite of William O’Neill.