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Resilience: With everything going on at the moment let us give credit to the S&P 500 for climbing back toward all-time highs for a third time in the space of just 2 months. Will the third time be the charm for breaking above the pesky 565 area? Sagging oil PRICES, war, the upcoming election, etc, and the widely watched benchmark is beating to it's own drum. A failed double-bottom breakout above a 5566 pivot so quickly afterward, is always seen as a red flag, but again PRICE is omnipotent and is stating higher ones like ahead. The MONTHLY chart is on a 4-month win streak and since the COVID lows that has occurred four times and each time went on to gain at least one more month. The S&P 500 has gained 9 of the last 10 months and in my opinion its trajectory will take a similar path to the one which advanced 14 of 17 months from April 2020 to August 2021. It feels like many were positioned for seasonality weakness and that has to be unwound just before the start of a historically strong Q4. And the WEEKLY chart now challenging the week ending 9/6's completion of a dubious evening star (doji candle week ending 8/30 as well) and the bearish engulfing candle from 7/19 is speaking volumes about its tenacity.

Was Druck Right? In the latest round of 13F filings a couple of weeks back Stanley Druckenmiller had sold out of his NVDA. To be frank we do not know when he did as 13F information is backward-looking and stale. But he is looking smart as usual today with the 6% plus haircut in the stock following the earnings announcement last night. Notice on the daily chart the bearish engulfing candles on 6/20 and 7/11 were both near-term tops. The latter one's drawdown recorded a move lower of 33.4% from the top to the bottom of the range. The jury is still out over last Thursday's bearish engulfing candle, but today's move will likely have the stock needing time to repair the technical damage. We know from FALSE moves (break BELOW bull flag) come fast ones in the opposite direction. Will the market be able to navigate higher with NVDA, which makes up more than 6% of the S&P 500, floundering? With today's move, it went from the second most valuable company on the planet to third, and is no longer a member of the $3T trifecta market cap club with AAPL and MSFT.

Gold Wants a 3 Handle: Is the shiny precious metal sniffing out something ominous on the horizon?  Of course, no one knows but its recent PRICE action which is what we focus on is telling us the path to least resistance is higher. The MONTHLY chart below shows it higher 7 of the last 10 and is looking for another advance in August. For the time being it is shrugging off weak seasonality factors, as like overall markets it is within the soft August-September time period and the break above the bull flag suggests a measured move to the very round 3000 number, which may or may not happen, and if it does occur could take years or sooner. The WEEKLY timeframe shows another break above a bull flag but at the 2450 pivot and Gold can still come back in 75 handles to retest the move before resuming its uptrend and would remain firmly intact. Notice RSI clinging to the overbought 70 RSI number for most of 2024 and we know there is nothing more bullish than an overbought situation that remains that way. Finally, the daily chart has some nice attributes as it twice broke above the range between 2300-2450, and fell back into it which both now look like bear traps.

DHI:

Software Sat Out: Wednesday was all about the semiconductor space as the Nasdaq surged nearly 3%. The SMH advanced 7.6% while the IGV added a "measly" 1.4% in comparison (and more important perhaps was the SMH CLOSED at highs for the session while the IGV did just the opposite finishing just above its 50-day SMA but now is below its 85.30 double bottom breakout pivot from 6/27 (bulls will say that is an optimal entry point and it is still north of the bullish island reversal from the gap up on 6/12 following the gap down on 5/30). Could this be a sign that the tech party was not as broad as it should have been? Of course, a lot of that underperformance was due to MSFT putting up a dud after its earnings reaction. The daily chart of Mr. Softee below shows a possible double-bottom base developing as it now sits 11% off most recent 52-week highs, but in my opinion, the lows of 412 from Wednesday must hold. If not a move back to the very round 400 number may be in order where it traded for a good chunk of early 2024, and that would align with the 50 WEEK SMA to catch up in PRICE. Notice it is looking at a possible first 4-week losing streak since last summer.