ChartSmarter Friday Game Plan 6/9/17

Markets once again hugged the UNCH line Thursday with the Nasdaq managing a mediocre gain of .4%. The S&P 500 eked out a fractional gain as well, as the Dow which did put in an unorthodox shooting star candle near all time highs. For the week headed into Friday the Nasdaq is higher by .2%, keeping intact all of the prior weeks 1.5% advance. The S&P 500 is lower by .2% this week thus far. The benchmarks continue to trade shallow and perhaps the old adage comes in handy here to never short a dull market. I do not pay attention to the indexes that much and did hear another great quote listening to ChatWithTraders podcast with RollyTrader that explained how focusing on them is really noise and you can better decipher the overall action by monitoring the action in leading stocks. Keeping it even simpler I liked JC Parets tweet as well this week mentioning to focus on pure price action alone and suggested maybe taking off all of your indicators on the charts to see it more clearly. Looking at individual groups the finnies outperformed for a second straight session. Thursday’s action was notable as the XLF clearly recouped its 50 day SMA which it had been underneath since slicing it on 3/21 dropping nearly 3% on the strongest daily volume in all of ’17 so far. The bearish head and shoulders pattern that began last December now looks more like the right side of a good looking cup base shaping up. On the flip side the more conservative groups fell the hardest with the staples and utilities giving up .7 and .8% respectively (there charts still look healthy however). Lets not forget how nice “old tech” plays have been working with the possible exception of CSCO. Below is the chart of YHOO and how it appeared in our Tuesday 5/16 Game Plan and today it screamed higher by 10%.