Stocks Overcome Minor Selling Attempts

SUMMARY:

- Stocks overcome minor selling attempts on the week, post gains along with some new post-bear market highs.
- Still feels as if you have the tiger by the tail, but thus far the tiger has not tried to swat us.
- Gallup puts Unemployment at 19.2% as CBO tells us long-term unemployed still at 40%, where they were in 2009.
- Philly Fed forecasting 30K jobs created in February. Why won't people hire?
- CPI 'lighter' trumpet the headlines, but the core is hot and getting hotter: beware gasoline prices.
- Sticking with what is working but the ranks of quality new plays are growing thinner.

Stocks hit some bumps but continue higher.

Hello fellow investors and traders. Let's face it, we all have to be traders to a certain extent right now, like it or not. Although we do still have investments. What about PCLN? You remember this company we bought way back in 2010 at $188, and today it was trading at $582. It was breaking out, as a matter of fact.

SOX overcame some minor selling on the session and on the week to post relatively nice gains. After all, stocks were trading laterally the prior week, and this week, even though they had issues getting away from that lateral range, they overcame them and rallied Thursday and Friday. We have had a few bumps along the way. Last Friday the stock market sold. It looked a bit shaky. Monday it bounced right back, but we had those sell on close orders. Wednesday the market sold back down, but it held the 10 day EMA again. Thursday it was back up, but there were those sell on close orders once again. Some former big buyers were now pretty big sellers, dumping shares. Friday did not seem to cause much of a problem, however.

Stocks were starting to the upside. They sold off and gave it all back early in the day, but then a slow, steady melt higher once more as another dip (this one intraday) was used as a buying opportunity. Looking at the SP500 chart, there were dips last Friday, then on Wednesday, but buyers stepped in and used the dips as an entry point as they have all along in this rally. There was no grand breakout move. Just more upside. That is not too bad given where the indices are. SP500 is still trying to get through its May peak. Other indices made it. NASDAQ continued to move higher above its prior post-bear market high. The Dow finally made more of a substantial move on Friday, clearing this two-week range where it played footsie with the old post-bear market high. Now looks like it might try to motor a bit. There was a good volume spike, but it was expiration Friday, so we cannot put too much into that.

All in all, it is hard to complain about the action on the week, particularly given that there were some hiccups. There was some actual selling showing up, but the market overcame it. The bids are still there. I was worried a few weeks back and spoke of the bids running out. They keep bumping up against the same resistance as the indices were bumping up against those prior highs, and there is the inability to break through. Sometimes that wears out the bids, so to speak. It exhausts the buyers and the sellers just wait them out. Once the buyers do not have anything left, the sellers can swoop in and knock stock prices backward. They took their shots last week, but they just were not able to knock them back. On Friday stocks managed to post gains and put in some decent moves on the indices.

SP500, +0.23%; NASDAQ, -0.27%; Dow, +0.35%; SP600, -0.03%; SOX, -0.88%; NASDAQ 100, -0.31%.

The SOX was up over 2% on Thursday and posted another solid gain on Wednesday as well. It was doing just fine. Why would the NASDAQ 100 be down? Big cap techs. AAPL was flat on the day. Some big names were unable to rally, and AAPL had that reversal on Wednesday. It looked like things were okay on Thursday. It held the 10 day EMA on a gap lower and reversed off of that, but it takes time for this kind of pattern to work through the system. I suppose it is good that they did not break down further, but it is not out of the woods yet given that Wednesday reversal.

All in all, not a bad week for stocks. Although there are still issues that I talked about last weekend that are still in play. That would be the double bout of selling attempts over the past week. They were not successful but, again, on the bounces at the end of the day there were sell on close orders and some big volume. That means there is some big money dumping shares the day after a selloff on a rebound. They are closing out their positions anyway. They were not buying into the dip as many were. They were selling at the peak of the dip. If they had been buying on the dip, obviously it would have been a bigger move. They were waiting, and they sold when the market went to close. Just so happens that, thus far, the market still found enough bids to overcome those sellers.

I talked about AAPL with its Wednesday reversal day. It held up, and that is good, but the jury is still out. Looking across the market, there are fewer stocks out there with those nice rounded bottoms that we can catch. We caught many of these in Q4 for the run higher to end 2011 and begin 2012. Those provided great gains for us to the upside. Now there are not that many. As noted last night, it is the missing demographic in the continued attempts for the market to move higher.

At the same time, there are more downside setups showing up. Some are in key areas such as the transports. KSU is a stock that we have been looking to play to the downside. We are seeing more topping patterns develop. Not more topping patterns than upside -- not at all. Just that more of them are developing. We are still looking at it for this weekend, but at this juncture I do not see a plethora of rounded tops that would be the antithesis of these rounded bottoms.

I talked a lot in October and November about the rounded bottoms that were setting up. I was excited about it. We felt that meant we were going to get the market rally. That was the whole point behind our thesis that we would get the run up to the prior highs in the SP500 and the other indices. That is exactly what happened. We rode these stocks to the upside. Others were already on the way as well; it was not all the rounded bottoms, but they provided a big foundation for the market to rally. We are watching for rounded tops. Not as many are setting up now, but some of those patterns look like they may be setting up a pennant. Those can give you a bit of a curve ball sometimes. Not that FTK is negative. We were looking at it as an upside play, but you can see what happened. MACD came up and hit a new high. It is just rolling over. It is not able to do anything with it. No major breakdown. It could just be a shakeout. We are watching it. You have to start watching patterns like this. There are some even bigger than this, stretching out over two or three months. Those are more of a worry than FTK. We see rounded tops forming, just not nearly as many as the rounded bottoms. If we saw multiple rounded tops in key stocks as well, that would be the indication that we would get a pullback, and a pretty good one at that. We are just not seeing that right now.

The overall economic data is solid. Retail Sales were not as great as expected, but if you ex out the autos, they were solid. And there were great revisions. The manufacturing numbers were good with Empire Manufacturing and the Philly Fed. Industrial Production and Capacity where not bad. Capacity was quite solid, thank you. Initial claims continued to improve. Housing Starts were higher than expected with a 1.5% rise. You can see what I am talking about. Where he getting better data, and that is on top of other data that was solid as well.

The U.S. data is looking good and, by golly, Europe seems to have it under control. I am not saying it is for certain, but it is giving the appearance of control whether it is in charge or not. Looking at the LIBOR rates, the dollar LIBOR went down to a new low on this selloff at 0.49. For the second day in a row, Friday, it continues to show less stress between the banks. The bond markets are improving. Portugal, Italy, and Spain yields are dropping significantly. If you are going to trust any market, typically it is the bond market. Of course there has been a lot of monkeying around with bonds given the government interventions, but they are showing that things are improving. LIBOR and the bond markets give pretty good insight that things are getting a bit better on the continent.

So is everything all candy and nuts now and we are all going to be happy at Christmas because of this? Everyone seems to think so. There is a lot of bullish sentiment out there. We had Barron's with its Dow 15K headline. We had the almost unending run higher in AAPL. And it is not just AAPL. CMG is running higher as well, day after day to the upside. COH is moving higher day after day. Well known, well loved, and moving higher. TJX is clicking them off with these slow moves right up the 10 day EMA. Just working its way higher.

A lot of people think we have hit nirvana when it comes to stocks with their steady moves and not giving any back. That is when you have to be a little worried. There is never nirvana in the market, although it seems like it sometimes. Everyone was partying too hard for too long back in 1999 and early 2000. They had a really bad headache afterwards... for years. The point is that we are getting pretty ebullient about stocks -- although the retail investor is not really in the market. Nonetheless, there is getting to be a lot of whipped-up sentiment, and people are coming around. It is ironic that AAPL made that great move and almost to the day that Barron's put out the Dow 15K article, AAPL surged and then reversed on high volume. Maybe that was just outstanding timing or maybe it is a little bit of foreshadowing.

Last week I said we had the tiger by the tail, and I think we still do. He may have seen us and tried to shake us off a little over the past week with those two downside days, but they were immediately followed by buying. Maybe he is planning something. Maybe he knows we are back there now and is scheming. We had those sell on close orders for two days. Big sells. We had AAPL reversing. We had a lot of great feelings in the market that everything is fine, and we have a lot of feeling in the economy that everything is fine. I have chronicled over the week that the economy is actually a piece of crud, although it is improving. Maybe it does not smell as bad and looks a little better, but crud is crud.

You can see what I am getting at. You have to be careful. Everyone is getting somewhat complacent. The tiger knows we are there. We will keep hanging onto that tail and following him along, but if he turns around and starts swinging at us, we will get out of the way pretty quickly. We are already moving into some downside plays, and we got knocked back on one of those this week had to close it. But we had some other good entries that I think could make us some money. If things keep hiccupping along, there will be some early fallout stocks that could make us money to the downside. That is the way it always is. There are always early leaders to the upside that everyone on follows, and there are always early leaders to the downside that most everyone follows that way.

The tiger is still running, and we are running with it. We are trying to figure out what tree are we going to jump off on. We were all laughing about it in the office today. If a stock looks at us sideways, we all said we would get out of them. We may be hyper paranoid right now, but we are seeing stocks do some pretty strange things on the day. HMSY sold off sharply. It rebounded, but it never really regained its trend. It closed below the 20 day EMA. It has been holding that for months on end. I like JAZZ a lot, but it sold off hard. It came back. We were just about to leave it because it was above the 2012 trend, but then it faltered. Got away from it.

We have some stocks that performed very well and have been market leaders. They are now coming under fire. The tiger is taking a swat here and there. It is just a matter of time before the tiger comes back to take a swipe at us. How do I know that? Because of history. I do not know precisely when it will happen; no one does. A lot of people think they do. What is more likely is the pullback similar to the one in Q4 of 2010. It was after that inverted head and shoulders bottom over the summer of that year, the rally back up to the prior highs, and JUST ABOVE the prior highs. Does that not sound familiar? And then the fade to test. But Quantitative Easing was still in place, so the rally continued.

We have not had our real test yet. We moved laterally, but that was not really a test. I still think we could come back and sell. We are starting to see more action that would line up with that idea and pull us to the downside. But it has not happened yet, so we are running with the tiger. We are still going into stocks. We saw buys we wanted like PCLN today. Long base, broke out, and tested it. That was a beautiful setup. I do not care if the market is at a zenith; PCLN looks like it wants to go up to $1000 again. I am not saying that is your target -- because I am not that stupid -- but I also bought some stock back at $188 and now it is trading at $582. You can still invest is some of these. I am not buying stock right here, although maybe it is a good play to do so. Maybe LEAPS could be a good thing to buy on PCLN if we are planning on it going potentially to $1000. That is something to consider. WFM is in its mid range, and it broke to the upside. It did a nice job of it, too. It still has room and could make us money. We are not looking for it to go up to $500. We are looking for it to trade up to the top of the range near 90. That is a start. That makes us some good money and puts the kids into college a bit better.

We have the tiger, but we still have some great stocks that are running along and will run interference for us. Maybe they are showing that the tiger does not really care about us right now. He just wants to head down the road. Since we are not holding him back, maybe he will let us ride along.


OTHER MARKETS

Dollar. 1.3158 versus 1.3132 euro. The dollar had a rough day, but it had a good week overall. It closed sharply lower against the euro. The yen is stinking so badly this week that the DXYO did not tank. Indeed, it gained on the week. The euro was up sharply on the week and the yen was down sharply on the week versus the dollar. That left the DXY0 up but off its highs on the week.


Bonds. 2.01% versus 2.00% 10 year U.S. Treasury. Bonds were flat on the day. Back down at the bottom of the range, but still holding the range. Bonds are not giving up. They are not totally convinced that everything is fine in Europe. If it was, then money would be fleeing back to the continent and our bonds would go down in price and up in yield. They are up in yield, but they have not broken through the bottom of the range.


Gold. 1,725.70, -2.80. Gold was flat on the week. Flat is not bad. Gold is holding the test of the breakout of the channel. Not bad action at all. It still think gold is going higher from here. Why? The EU is adopting all the U.S. strategies on how to liquefy your way out of problems. Ultimately that leads to some pretty hellish inflation, and that is what will put gold to the upside. The thing holding gold back this week was the lack of fear. It was the fear being taken out of the equation in Europe. Inflation will take charge again. We saw it in the U.S. CPI numbers. When that happens, gold will head back to the upside.


Oil. 103.27, +0.73. Oil looks unstoppable. It is right at the top of its range. International pressures are adding to it as well as simple stupidity in the U.S. Gasoline hit a new high at 3.53 per gallon. That was up from last week, and it is up 92% since President Obama took office. Oil will create problems for the economy, no doubt.


The other markets were acting like you would expect them to act. That is not necessarily good for us when looking at the price of oil and how gold is setting up, looking at inflation over the long run. But the market has not stopped. It has overcome the little bit of adversity that has been thrown its way, so we keep running with the tiger. We have him by the tail. He could turn around and maul us at any time, but we will run with him for as long as he will let us.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY

Volume. NASDAQ, +1.5%; NYSE, +11%. It was expiration, so you would expect a little higher volume. That is what we got, and it still was not very high volume at that.


Breadth. NASDAQ +1:1; NYSE +1.4:1


THE CHARTS

SP500. The notables: On Friday a break lower and rebound. Wednesday a break lower. Thursday a rebound. Now a new rally high. Still not over the prior post-bear market highs, but moving in that direction up toward 1375. It will be the moment of truth. It may stop these moves or it may not, but it looks like the SP500 will be the last of the majors to make it to that level.


DJ30. DJ30 finally broke out of its highs a bit decisively. Looks like it could put some moves on it if it wants to. Lateral consolidation for two weeks, breaking higher. Could be off to the races like PCLN. We will see.


NASDAQ. NASDAQ pulled back on the day. AAPL and the big boys were not helping out, but it extended its lead over its prior 2011 post-bear market highs. NASDAQ continues to be the leadership index.


SP600. The small caps made a decent comeback on Thursday. Friday they were matching the prior bear market highs, but still below the nominal new high hit in early February. This is the lick-log point for the small caps. Will they be able to break through and extend the move like NASDAQ and perhaps the Dow? Or will they be stuck here spinning their wheels?


SOX. The SOX had a very good week. It was up nicely Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Gapped higher and sold back on Friday. Technology had a bit of trouble. Growth had trouble on Friday, but this did not turn the tide on this move. A nice breakout over the November and December peak, and there is a good rally to the upside underway. It even cleared that July 2010 high. Still a lot of resistance ahead, no doubt. One of the major points of resistance is at 450-455. About the best the SOX could do was 439. It still has room to run. If the rest of the indices wants to move, SOX can help push in from below


LEADERSHIP

It was not a bad week for leadership. I will go through several different stocks that performed fairly well.

STX gapped higher on earnings. It has moved laterally nicely. Looks like it wants to make the break to the upside. Of course there is the PCLN juggernaut. It came to life in mid-January and it is looking super to the upside. Not bad at all. TXN is a key chip stock. It is still struggling to get over those prior peaks, but it has put in something of an ascending triangle. Maybe it can make the move. TEX has really been interesting. It continues to move to the upside. TJX is continuing to move higher up the 10 day EMA and 20 day EMA. These stocks are showing continued buying. Another building-related company is TREX. It has had a bit of trouble at the end of the week, but it came right back.

As long as these stocks keep performing as they are, we have that tiger by the tail. We will let him keep running. We do not see the breaks. We do not see the rounded tops yet. We do not see those clear flags that tell us to get out. We are not seeing that at all, but we are being careful. If we see a stock that looks like it will get in trouble, we take it out and shoot it before it shoots us or drags us down. We do not want to be like one of those guys caught on a line in "Deadliest Catch." They are out catching crabs, and when a guy goes overboard he is frozen like a popsicle and dead in two minutes. That is what happens when a stock starts dive on you and you do not cut the cord rapidly enough. It does not necessarily kill you (although it can), but it bleeds our gains away. Just do not do it. If the market keeps going up, we will other opportunities. We still have many great plays to continue higher for us.

We still have leaders that are running. We just do not have a lot of those in the rounded-bottom genre. There are a few out there. We will continue to put them on the report, but they are not showing up as fast as they used to. That is just a factor of how far the market has run right now. We have that tiger by the tail. We are letting him run, and we still have leaders running. They are making us money, and we will not say no to that.


THE ECONOMY

Gallup pegs the accurate unemployment rate.

Philly Fed and jobs: the connection.

CPI core is showing inflation.


TO VIEW THE ECONOMY OVERVIEW CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK:

Flash: http://investmenthouse1.com/ihmedia/f/eco/eco.html



THE MARKET

SENTIMENT INDICATORS

VIX: 17.78; -1.44
VXN: 19.76; -1.13
VXO: 16.33; -0.8

Put/Call Ratio (CBOE): 0.75; -0.13


Bulls versus Bears:

This is a reading of the number of bullish investment advisors versus bearish advisors. The reason you look at this is that it gives you an idea of how bullish investors are. If they are too bullish then everyone is in the market and it is heading for a top: if everyone wants to be in the market, then all the money is in and there is no more new cash to drive it higher. On the other side of the spectrum if there are a lot of bears then there is a lot of cash on the sideline, and as the market rallies it drags that cash in as the bears give in. That cash provides the market the fuel to move higher. If bears are low it is the same as a lot of bulls: everyone is in and the market does not have the cash to drive it higher.

Bulls: 52.1% versus 48.9%. After a dip from 50.0% bulls are picking up steam. At the highest level since April and May of 2011, the peak of the post-bear market high. Now the indices are back at that level and so are the bulls. All the more reason to watch this action at the prior highs. 35% is the threshold measuring bullish versus bearish action. Six weeks the bulls were below bears. A powerful sentiment signal but now dissipating. Highs from April and December (60% readings spanning December through early May 2011). The 5 year high is 62.0. The crossover level at 29% bulls from July 2010 is long gone. 35% is the threshold level suggesting bullishness. To be seriously bearish it needs to get up to the 60% to 65% level.

Bears: 28.7% versus 29.8%. Still around the 30% level but starting to back off, matching the same level as three weeks back. A bit less fearful as the indices probe the prior highs. Not at a bearish level but they are growing more confident even as the market hits the prior highs and is not blasting on through. For more reference, bearishness hit a 5 year high at 54.4% the last week of October 2008. The move over 50 took bearish sentiment to its highest level since 1995. Extreme negative sentiment. Prior levels for comparison: Bearishness peaked at 37.4% in September 2007. It topped the June 2006 peak (36%) on that run. That June peak eclipsed the March 2006 high (33%) and well above the 2005 highs that spawned new rallies (30% in May 2005, 29.2% in October 2005). That was a huge turn, unlike any seen in recent history.


NASDAQ

Stats: -8.07 points (-0.27%) to close at 2951.78
Volume: 1.933B (+1.52%)

Up Volume: 836.27M (-783.73M)
Down Volume: 1.08B (+779.13M)

A/D and Hi/Lo: Advancers led 1.02 to 1
Previous Session: Advancers led 3.23 to 1

New Highs: 126 (+11)
New Lows: 12 (-1)


SP500/NYSE

Stats: +3.19 points (+0.23%) to close at 1361.23
NYSE Volume: 831M (+11.24%)

Up Volume: 1.99B (-1.46B)
Down Volume: 1.66B (+1.107B)

A/D and Hi/Lo: Advancers led 1.4 to 1
Previous Session: Advancers led 3.01 to 1

New Highs: 174 (+39)
New Lows: 2 (-5)


DJ30

Stats: +46.02 points (+0.36%) to close at 12950.1
Volume DJ30: 234M shares Friday versus 134M shares Thursday.


TUESDAY

There is a three-day weekend, so we will be starting things off on Tuesday. That could be interesting because Monday brings the interminable votes with respect to the Greece bailout. They have a few votes a week. Maybe they voted on the week before, but that was not binding so they have to vote again. And this other one was not really the right vote. You get the idea. We have that on Monday. They are planning to put the serious news out on Tuesday when the U.S. markets are open so they can react to that. That is what we hear. There will be something happening. In Europe there always is, right? No big deal there. The issues are if something happens in Iran or someplace similar. But no one can control that anyway.

It is a three-day weekend. What do you do? No one was selling, that is for sure. There was no real desire to sell. It was expiration, so that colors the tape a bit. It is hard to complain about the way things closed. Tuesday is a whole new story, and we will see what happens. The data does not come out until Wednesday. Existing Home Sales come out a half hour into trade. They are important. Then we have the usual Initial Claims on Thursday. On Friday we have the Michigan Sentiment final for February and New Home sales. Some important reports, although backing off.

What do we do at this point in the market? We continue doing what we have been doing all along in this rally. Of course we cannot do it to the same degree we were because we do not those nice, rounded bottom plays coming off of the double bottoms or the rounded bottoms or the cup with handles, or whatever they were forming down there. We had inverted head and shoulders, triangles. We saw a bit of everything. The common denominator was that they were putting in some form of a bottoming pattern, and they have broken higher and run for two to three months on top of that. We will stick with that because it has not changed.

We do not see dramatic changes in leadership, although we do see some that are having problems. The problem is the ranks of the upside quality plays are growing thinner. We are trying to stick to well-known names in great position if we can. There are other stocks in great position that have great patterns but are not as well known. That is not bad, but if the market starts to buck those are stocks that are jettisoned first. People do not really know them, so they just hang on to the household name stocks like AAPL. You do not want to get too heavy into lesser-known stocks just as you think the market might be moving toward some kind of top before a pullback.

That leaves you in a dilemma. You want to stick with quality, but you have to have quality names that give you the right kind of risk/reward. You do not want to put a dollar at risk for a dollar risk of loss. That is a losing proposition over the long run. You want to get those odds in you are favor. You want to have three points to make to the upside without having to break any resistance to one point to the downside to your support. There should be a support level there, and your stop loss can be right underneath that as a little firewall. As they said in Gettysburg, "This is damn good ground." That is good ground, and you want that big support (or resistance if you are playing downside) between your stock and where your stop is. That gives your play a chance to run even if it wants to test. It will hold at that support and bounce again.

You want to find those plays, but they are harder to find. They hate me here in the office because I keep saying "That will not work. That is not good enough. No. That will not be a play with enough quality." It is driving the guys crazy, but that is where you get the big bucks. That is why we keep finding those and it is what we will focus on. We will stick with what we are doing. We will hang onto that tiger's tail, letting our positions run, but we will be ruthless in protecting them as we have been.

We have a list of stocks that are on the bubble. Positions that are not maybe working as well as we wanted them to given the market rise. The patterns are not exactly what we want to see, but they are still working on it. But if they get in trouble then, boom, they are gone. The list is shorter because we have closed a lot of those positions. We have been fortunate that we can still close them with gains. We are not losing any money and actually putting more money in the bank as we do close them. We will continue to look that way, but we have to be flexible. We will be looking more downside as well. Keep your eyes open for rounded tops, head and shoulders setting up. Things that go bump in the night where you have highs and highs, but lower MACDs and the higher high. Just as we had higher MACD at the lower lows on the bottom. That is the circle of life. It goes up; it goes down. It is the symmetry of it all that is so compelling. We will have problems when we start seeing more tops like this, bottoms like this, or stocks that are still continuing to put those little pyramids one on top of another as they hold their trendline. We are not there yet, but we will probably see more of those as time goes on in this rally.

We will just take what the market gives along the way, adjusting accordingly. We will naturally move from a bullish, upside bent to a more bearish downside position as the market morphs into the pullback stage. I want to reiterate, as I did on Thursday, that I am not talking about a major selloff. I am talking about a pullback to test the October highs or the 50 day EMA, similar to what the market did in Q4 of 2010. It came back to test after matching (or just besting) the original rally high off of the bear market low.

I will see you on Tuesday. Have a great weekend!


Support and Resistance

NASDAQ: Closed at 2951.78

Resistance:
3026 from 10/2000 low
3042 from 5/2000 low


Support:
The 10 day EMA at 2919
2888 is the May 2011 peak and post-bear market high
2879 is the July 2011 peak
The 20 day EMA at 2875
2862 is the 2007 peak
2841 is the February 2011 peak
2825 is the 2007 closing peak.
2816 is the early April 2011 peak.
The 50 day EMA at 2778
2754 is the October 2011 high
2706 to 2705 is the April 2011 low and the February 2011 and consolidation low (bottom of the trading range) 2723 to 2705 is the range of support at the bottom of the January to May trading range
2686 is the January 2011 closing low
2676 is the January 2010 low and the December 2011 peak
The 200 day SMA at 2665
2645-2650ish from December 2010 consolidation
2643 is the September 2011 high
2612 is the late August 2011 peak
2603 is the March 2011 intraday low (post-Japan low)
2599 is the June 2011 low and NASDAQ
2593 is the November intraday high
2580 is the November 2010 closing high
2572 is the November 2-11 gap down point
2555 is the mid-August 2011 peak
2546 is the early September 2011 gap down point
2535 is the November island reversal gap point
2532 is the early August gap down point
2469 is the November 2010 low
2441 is the November 2011 low
2331 from October 2010 low and the August 2011 intraday low
2305 from the August 2010 peak (summertime base)
2139 is the May and June 2010 low


S&P 500: Closed at 1361.23
Resistance:
1364 is the March 2007 low
1370 is the August 2007 low
1371 is the recent May 2011 peak

Support:
1357 is the July 2011 peak
1344 is the February 2011 peak
1340 is the early April 2011 peak
The 20 day EMA at 1335
1332 is the early March 2011 peak
1325-27 is the March 2008 closing low and the May 2006 peak.
1318.51 is the May low
1313 from the August 2008 interim peak
The 50 day EMA at 1302
1295 to 1294 is the April 2011 low and the February 2011 consolidation low (bottom of the trading range)
1293 is the October 2011 peak
1275 is the January 2010 low, early January 2011 peak
1267 is the December 2011 peak
1258 is June 2011 intraday low
The 200 day SMA at 1257
1255 is the late December 2010 consolidation range
1249 is the March 2011 low (post-Japan)
1235 is the mid-December 2010 consolidation low
1231 is the late August 2011 peak
1227 is the November 2010 peak
1220 is the April 2010 peak
1209 is the mid-August 2011 high
1196 is the November 2010 consolidation peak
1178-1180 is the October 2010/November 2010 consolidation low
1158 is the November 2011 low
1131 - 1127 from August 2010 base peak.
1119 is the early August closing low
1109 is the mid-September 2010 gap up point
1101 is the August 2011 low
1075 is the October 2011 intraday low
1099 from the mid-July interim peak


Dow: Closed at 12,949.87
Resistance:
13,058 from the May 2008 peak on that bounce in the selling

Support:
12,876 is the May high
The 20 day EMA at 12,771
12,754 is the July intraday peak
The 50 day EMA at 12,508
12,391 is the February 2011 peak
12,284 is the October 2011 peak
12,258 is the December 2011 peak
12,110 from the March 2007 closing low
12,094 is the April 2011 low
The 200 day SMA at 11,993
The June low at 11,897 (closing)
11,893 from March 2008 closing low
11,867 from the August 2009 high and peak on that bounce in the selling.
11,734 from 11-98 peak
11,717 is the late August 2011 peak
The August low at 11,702
11,555 is the March low
11,452 is the November 2010 peak
11,178 from November 2010
10,978 is the bottom of the November 2010 consolidation
10,750 from September 2010
10,720 is the August closing low
10,705-710 from January 2010 peak
10,694-700 from August 2010 peak
9938 is the August 2010 low



Economic Calendar

February 14 - Tuesday
Retail Sales, January (8:30): 0.4% actual versus 0.8% expected, 0.0% prior (revised from 0.1%)
Retail Sales ex-auto, January (8:30): 0.7% actual versus 0.5% expected, -0.5% prior (revised from -0.2%). Largest rise since 2/11.
Export Prices ex-ag., January (8:30): 0.0% actual versus -0.2% prior
Import Prices ex-oil, January (8:30): 0.1% actual versus 0.2% prior, +7.1% yr/yr
Business Inventories, December (10:00): 0.4% actual versus 0.5% expected, 0.3% prior

February 15 - Wednesday
MBA Mortgage Index, 02/11 (7:00): -1.0% actual versus 7.5% prior
Empire Manufacturing, February (8:30): 19.5 actual versus 14.0 expected, 13.5 prior
Net Long-Term TIC Fl, December (9:00): $17.9B actual versus $61.3B prior (revised from $59.8B)
Industrial Production, January (9:15): 0.0% actual versus 0.6% expected, 1.0% prior (revised from 0.4%)
Capacity Utilization, January (9:15): 78.5% actual versus 78.6% expected, 78.6% prior (revised from 78.1%)
NAHB Housing Market Index, February (10:00): 29 actual versus 26 expected, 25 prior
Crude Inventories, 02/11 (10:30): -0.171M actual versus 0.304M prior
FOMC Minutes, 1/25 (14:00)

February 16 - Thursday
Initial Claims, 02/11 (8:30): 348K actual versus 365K expected, 361K prior (revised from 358K)
Continuing Claims, 02/04 (8:30): 3426K actual versus 3505K expected, 3526K prior (revised from 3515K)
Housing Starts, January (8:30): 699K actual versus 671K expected, 689K prior (revised from 657K)
Building Permits, January (8:30): 676K actual versus 675K expected, 671K prior (revised from 679K)
PPI, January (8:30): 0.1% actual versus 0.3% expected, -0.1% prior
Core PPI, January (8:30): 0.4% actual versus 0.2% expected, 0.3% prior
Philadelphia Fed, February (10:00): 10.2 actual versus 10.0 expected, 7.3 prior

February 17 - Friday
CPI, January (8:30): 0.2% actual versus 0.3% expected, 0.0% prior
Core CPI, January (8:30): 0.2% actual versus 0.1% expected, 0.1% prior
Leading Indicators, January (10:00): 0.4% actual versus 0.5% expected, 0.5% prior (revised from 0.4%)


February 22 - Wednesday
MBA Mortgage Index, 02/18 (7:00): -1.0% prior
Existing Home Sales, January (10:00): 4.63M expected, 4.61M prior

February 23 - Thursday
Initial Claims, 02/18 (8:30): 355K expected, 348K prior
Continuing Claims, 02/11 (8:30): 3450K expected, 3426K prior
FHFA Housing Price Index, December (10:00): 1.0% prior
Crude Inventories, 02/18 (11:00): -0.171M prior

February 24 - Friday
Michigan Sentiment - Final, February (9:55): 73.0 expected, 72.5 prior
New Home Sales, January (10:00): 315K expected, 307K prior

By: Jon Johnson, Editor
Copyright 2012 | All Rights Reserved

Jon Johnson is the Editor of The Daily at InvestmentHouse.com

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