Market recovers nicely

As I do every weekend on Financial Tides, I use Barchart to filter out all the noise I've read all week long and step back for an objective, by the numbers view of what the market really did and how strong it reacted to all the hype from who knows where. Wouldn't life be simpler if all that counted was growth in GDP and individual companies' sales and earnings growth? I guess we'll all just have to adjust to the talking heads and the hot air out of Washington. Let's start as usual with the Value Line Index, then the Barchart market momentum and finally the ratio of stocks hitting new high to new lows.

Value Line Index -- I use this Index because it contains 1700 stocks making it much broader than the S&P 500 or much narrower Dow 30 -- The Index was up for the week by 5.18%

• The Index plotted above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages -- positive trend
• Barchart's technical indicators rate the Index an 88% buy with 12 of 13 indicators on buy signals

Barchart market momentum indicator -- usually contains around 6000 stocks --the percentage of stocks trading above their daily moving averages for various time frames -- also a nice upward trend

• 20 DMA -- 88.28% traded above compared to 73.15% last week and 20.48% last month
• 50 DMA -- 79.46% traded above compared to 58.91% last week and 36.99% last month
• 100 DMA -- 79.44% traded above compared to 66.08% last week and 46.12% last month

Ratio of stocks hitting new highs to stocks hitting new lows for various time frames -- 1.0+ bullish, 1.0 neutral and below .99 bearish -- this week looked good

• 20 day ratio of stocks hitting new highs to new lows -- 3059/196 = 15.61
• 65 day ratio of stocks hitting new highs to new lows -- 1131/85 = 16.43
• 100 day ratio of stocks hitting new highs to new lows -- 1121/542 = 2.07

Summary -- The market looked pretty strong for the week. I trimmed a lot of stocks from my various portfolios especially those that didn't respond to the change in the market; mostly those that didn't maintain a priced above their 50 day moving averages. Unless something drastic happens I'll replace those this week with confidence.

Wall Street Survivor results -- The S&P 500 has gone up 2.06% month to date and 6 of our 8 contestants beat that. Month to date Vad -- The Sceptical Capitalist gained 6.36% and I 'm in second with 4.67% gain. Ahh -- 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 do not hold any positions in the stocks in my Wall Street Survivor portfolio.