Market momentum mildly up

Each weekend on Financial Tides I like to take stock of the market and see if the market has changed direction and I might need to rethink my strategy. I report how my portfolio on Wall Street Survivor is doing against the other participants from MSN's Top Stock blog. I try to use the same standard methodology and explain my conclusions.

I use BarChart and the various technical analysis indicators I have come to rely on for the last 5 years. Let's look at them one at a time:

Value Line Index - an index of the 1700 stocks followed by Value Line - I like this better than the S&P 500 because it contains more stocks and is not market cap weighted so that larger companies are not given greater weight. To me that's a better feel of the overall market.

1. BarChart still ranks the index as a 32% overall buy with 7 of the indicators buy, 3 sell and 3 hold. I would point out that the 3 sells are all short term and are what I expected to see. Bullish but not big time.
2. The Value Line Index is tracking below its 20 day moving average -- just barely, but still tracking above it's 59 & 100 DMA. Weaker than last week but still in the green. Bullish but still weak.
3. The Index is down for the week by 1.74% but up for the month by 1.02%. The index has been up each of the last 5 months

BarChart Market momentum - are stocks trading above or below their DMAs for various periods? Follows approximately 6000 stocks - still positive, so bullish.

1. 51% above their 20 DMA
2. 68% above their 50 DMA
3. 82% above their 100 DMA

Ratio of stocks hitting new highs to stocks hitting new lows for various periods: 1.0+ positive, 1.0 neutral, below .99 negative -- this week bullish

1. 20 day new high/new low ratio -- 652/619 = 1.1 -- bullish
2. 50 day new high/new low ratio -- 467/202 = 2.3 -- bullish
3. 100 day new high/new low ratio -- 442/116= 3.8 -- bullish

All of the 3 areas I look at are still bullish but not as much as last week's review.

On Wall Street Survivor I compare my performance for the month since that is the only time frame we all have participated. The S&P is up 2.13% for the month but I'm down .03%. No need to panic but that puts me in 5th place out of 8 with Anthony Mirhaydari taking away top honors again this week.

Let's not expect too much from the market. Remember this is still earnings season. The market has been climbing on anticipation and earnings season is a reality check time so stocks are adjusting to the accountants earnings and away from the analysts earnings expectations.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who blogs on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email FinancialTides@gmail.com

Disclosure: I hold no positions in any of the stocks in my Wall Street Survivor portfolio at the time of publication