Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Look at the Week's Stock Market Rally


Hats off once again to the fine Decision Point site, which separates out the common stocks from all the other NYSE issues for analysis. Above we see the advance-decline line (bottom pane) for NYSE common issues; clearly it's bounced nicely off its lows. The site also reports that 54% of NYSE issues are now trading above their 20-day moving averages and 18% are above their 50-day benchmarks. The latter is the highest percentage since the October market drop.

Friday also saw the number of NYSE, NASDAQ, and ASE stocks making fresh 20-day highs exceed new lows by 304 to 120. I will be watching those numbers closely; despite Friday's gains, we did not see an expansion of new 20-day highs. Friday's money flows were slightly negative for the Dow Industrial stocks at -$15 million, though the week's flows were modestly positive at $33 million. We will need to see continued expansion in new 20-day highs and continued positive money flow numbers to keep the rally going.
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