Market continues to climb

Well another week has passed and on Financial Tides it's time to step back and take an objective view of what happened in the market during the past week. As always I use Barchart to screen my data and I keep the same 3 yard sticks so my view stays consistent. Let's see where we are.

Value Line Index -- Contains 1700 stocks so it much broader than the S&P 500 or the much narrower Dow 30 -- We were up by 1.63% for the week, 6.89% for March following 4.65% increase in February -- Very positive

• The Index closed Friday above its 20, 50 & 100 daily moving average


• Barchart's 13 technical indicators showed 12 of 13 buy signals and 1 hold

Barchart Market Momentum -- Contains approximately 6000 stocks - The percentage of stocks closing above their DMA for various time frames -- Above 50% for all 3 time frames

• 20 DMA -- 85.38% closed above -- 86.76% last week


• 50 DMA -- 82.69% closed above -- 82.82% last week


• 100 DMA -- 81.67% closed above -- 81.38% last week

Ratio of stock hitting new highs to new lows for various time frames -- 1.0+ bullish, 1.0 neutral, below .99 bearish -- Very bullish for all 3 time frames

• 20 day ratio of new highs/new lows -- 2274/227 = 10.02


• 65 day ratio of new highs/new lows -- 1239/102 = 12..15


• 100 day ratio of new highs/new lows -- 1129/79 = 14.29

Summary -- The market appears to be rising on all 3 yard sticks. Unless something really drastic happens I'll just continue with my standard method of culling stocks that fail to maintain a price above their 50 day moving averages and feel confident that the market will continue to rise and I'll replace them with new selections.

Wall Street Survivor results -- The 8 analysts that post stock selections to Top Stocks have a friendly competition going over on Wall Street Survivor. Month to date the S&P 500 is up 3.07% and 5 of the 8 analysts beat that mark. Our Skeptical Capitalist Vad managed to increase his gain by 7.87% and I'm in the 5th position with a gain of 3.18%. Maybe next week.

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: I hold no positions in the stocks in my Wall Street Survivor portfolio