Pulse of the Market: February 29, 1010

Every weekend on Financial Tides I try to cut through all the headlines and sound bites that just confuse the heck out of me to step back and figure out what really happened in the past week and decide what to do in the next week. As always I get my data from Barchart. I use the same 3 benchmarks so I don't confuse myself.

Value Line Index -- I use this because it contains 1700 stocks making it broader than the S&P 500 or the even narrower Dow 30 - Down .4% for the week but still up 4.65% for the month.

• The Index closed on Friday above all 3 daily moving averages -- 20, 50 & 100 DMA


• Barchart's 13 technical indicators had 8 buys, 3 holds and 2 sells for a 48% overall buy rating

Barchart market momentum -- The percentage of stocks trading above their DMAs for various periods -- If the figure is above 50% then you have better than 1/2 a chance to make some money -- all 3 slightly down but still in your favor

• 20 DMA -- 73.25% closed above the 20 DMA -- down from 74.89% last week


• 50 DMA -- 58.95% closed above the 50 DMA -- down from 61.39% last week


• 100 DMA -- 66.14% closed above the 100 DMA -- down from 67.38% last week

Ratio of stocks hitting new highs to new lows for various time frames -- 1.0+ bullish, 1.0 neutral, below .99 bearish -- looks like we are still OK this week

• 20 day ratio of new highs to new lows -- 1171/271 = 4.32


• 50 day ratio of new highs to new lows -- 486/138 = 3.52


• 100 day ratio of new highs to new lows -- 406/102 = 3.98

Summary -- We were just slightly off the momentum we had last week but not really negative. Might be a good week to cull what hasn't performed and search of some new replacements next week.

Wall Street Survivor results -- Well for the month the S&P 500 was up 2.85% and 5 of our Top Stock contestants beat that mark. Anthony Mirhaydari lead the pack with a 10.57% MTD return and I managed to follow closely with a 10.05% increase. On Friday I sold Tyler Technologies (TYL) because it just wasn't maintaining a price above its 50 day moving average. I'll hunt for a replacement later next week.

We've turned another page on the calender so let's see who the new leader will be next month.

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

Disclosure - No positions in any stock mentioned.

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