Pull the trigger with confidence.

The 14-day Choppiness Index for the SP500 hit a reading of 4.60 on April 17, 2026.  That's on a scale from 0 to 100, and it is the lowest reading in at least the last 30 years.  It might be the lowest ever, but I only checked back 30 years.

The math for the Choppiness Index was created by Australian commodities trader E.W. Driess, as a way to quantify how choppy (or not) the recent price action has been.  It shows a high reading when above 62, or a low reading below 38 (Driess was evidently... Read More

On April 15, the SP500 and the Nasdaq Composite Index moved to new all-time highs, and added to those records on April 16.  The NYSE's A-D Line is still 1018 net advances away from equaling its own all-time high.

Some might see it as a bearish divergence to have the SP500 make a new all-time high while the A-D Line has not yet confirmed.  I do not see it that way, in part because the NYSE Composite Index is still 2.4% away from its own all-time high.  So in that sense, the A-D Line is... Read More

Several analysts I respect have noted that the price structure in 2026 is looking a lot like that of 2025.  This week's chart highlights that point, but I had to do a little bit of tweaking to get the best pattern fit. 

Whenever I employ price pattern analogs, I strive to find the best overall fit of even the minor price wiggles.  That helps to validate (or not) that I have a good pattern comparison.  To get the best fit in comparing 2026 to 2025, I had to do a little bit of time shifting,... Read More

When my parents wrote Patterns For Profit in 1970 to introduce the McClellan Oscillator and Summation Index to the world, they emphasized the point that the patterns in the structure of the indicators mattered more than the numerical levels.  One of the patterns that they highlighted was seeing a 3rd bottom in the Oscillator, higher than the prior two.  We just had one of these, conveying a big bullish message for the stock market.

The McClellan Oscillator measures acceleration in the... Read More

There is a fun magic trick which the McClellan Summation Index does when it crosses through its neutral level, which is the topic of this week's chart.  The moment of crossing down through neutral tends to mark at least a temporary bottom for the price decline which brought about that crossing.  This also happens crossing back up through zero to mark tops, but to a lesser extent.

The Summation Index chart shown above is the "classic" version, first created by my parents Sherman and Marian... Read More

I wrote here in February about how the Investors Intelligence bull-bear spread had gone to an extremely high level.  It has since come back down again, as the war with Iran has stock market analysts rethinking their optimism.

The Investors Intelligence survey of investment advisors and newsletter writers (including me) comes out every week.  Like most sentiment surveys, it responds to what prices are doing.  There is nothing like an uptrend to get people excited, and selloffs tend to make... Read More

The war against Iran has pulled down the major US indices, and it has hit some overseas markets even harder.  One encouraging sign, though, is that there is no bearish divergence apparent yet between EEM and the SP500.

EEM is the "emerging markets" ETF sponsored by iShares.  It supposedly invests in stocks in new markets that are just getting going, although its two largest holdings are Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and Samsumg.  One could argue that both Taiwan and South Korea are already... Read More