Markets showed some muscle Thursday, but a late mild selloff washed away gains with the Russell 2000 outperforming higher by .4%, and was even better than it looked as its greatest weighting lies within the financials which were weak today. The Nasdaq and the S&P were essentially UNCH. Tomorrow will be an important day, especially for the S&P 500 as it needs to establish a clean break above this bull flag we have been mentioning for the last few days. Its uptrend would still be well intact, but some short term weakness could transpire and a move to the upward sloping 50 day SMA would not be out of the ordinary. That important line lies about 1.5% from current prices. On a weekly basis heading into Friday the S&P 500 is higher by .1% and a CLOSE here tomorrow would be a fourth consecutive very taut weekly close. The Nasdaq is behaving better this week as it has risen 1.4% thus far. At the expense of sounding like a broken record healthcare once agin led the way on a sector basis with the XLV advancing 1%, and for the week is higher by 3.7% through Thursday, enjoying its best weekly gain since the week ending 11/11/16 which exploded higher by 6%. It looks assured to keep current a 5 week winning streak and has made a clear break above a 3 week tight pattern, with the last 3 all CLOSING within just .27 of each other, and weekly volume already is above average with one session still remaining. Below is the chart of Q, and how it appeared in our Monday 6/12 Game Plan, in the white hot group and it is now on an impressive 6 session winning streak and today cleared the very round 90 figure which is important as names that achieve that feat often go on to trade to par and beyond. It took out a bull flag trigger as well and is higher by 4.3% heading into Friday. The push back into tech, industrials and healthcare has overshadowed the fact that the staples, the worst actor Thursday with the XLP down .5%, are looking at a potential third consecutive weekly loss. The prior two weeks fell 1 and 1.3% and this week is lower by .7% so far. The top 10 holdings in the ETF were lower Thursday with COST still feeling the AMZN hangover and now off a quick 13% from the double top at 183 recorded the weeks ending 5/5 and 6/9.

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