Pull the trigger with confidence.

Crude oil prices reached a new multi-year high on October 3, and then started a dramatic drop.  It has just now fallen for 12 straight trading days to reach the lowest close since December 2017.  There are various theories about why this has happened, attributing it to comments from President Trump, OPEC chicanery, Iranian oil exports, falling demand, fracking overproduction, and all manner of other explanations.  But few of those explanations address the “when” question, concerning why this... Read More

I was asked recently about the upcoming “grand solar minimum”, and whether it means anything for the stock market.  This is something I have looked at, and the answer is that I wish it was more meaningful than it really is.

Solar minimum is when the sunspot count bottoms out as the sun goes quieter.  The sunspot cycle averages 11 years, but over the historical record its period has varied from 9-14 years.  This week’s chart shows that at the solar minimum, there is often a noticeable bottom... Read More

We are in a time when “normal” relationships are not working, and when any slight hint of misperformance is getting punished.  So it is fascinating to see that AAPL’s normal quarterly price behavior pattern is still “working”, something I discussed here back in August. 

AAPL’s share price has a pretty regular pattern which plays itself out over each calendar quarter.  Apple Corp. releases its quarterly earnings report usually on the 1st day of the month, one month after the end of the... Read More

The bearish seasonality of July to October got put off until the last minute, and now the stock market has tried to do 4 months’ worth of work in just a couple of weeks.  One result of that cramming at the last minute is that a pretty deep oversold condition has arisen, which is evident in a variety of indicators, including this week’s chart.

As of Oct. 24, only 13 of the 100 stocks in the Nasdaq 100 Index are currently above their own 100-day moving averages.  In case you’re wondering,... Read More