For the first time in days I decided to turn on the television and see how excited folks really were about the stock market. Yes, I like the statistics, but I am also a fan of the chatter. You know, the anecdotal evidence that I am so fond of.
What did I learn? I learned that many have come around to my way of thinking in the last week or so. Many are now looking for the catch-up trade. They have decided it’s time for the down-and-outers to join the party. That’s probably because they have joined the party, but generally speaking we know that when they are no longer all-in on technology — and only technology — and feel emboldened enough to announce they are willing to spread the love, we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves.
And you can see it in some of the big-cap tech names. They have slowed down in the last week or so. Look at Alphabet (GOOGL) , which is the same price it was nearly a month ago. Clearly folks have moved on to spread the love elsewhere.
In that same time period something like the regional banks exchange-traded fund (KRE) is up about 5%. So is it any wonder folks think the love will/should spread? Because it already has.
And all of this happens just as the market is getting overbought on a short-term basis. I know there are all sorts of charts going around, showing us that Fed days tend to be bad days in the market, so I will not be surprised if the market is up on Wednesday. But it won’t change that we are getting short-term overbought.
In any event, the number of stocks making new highs expanded for Nasdaq — even beyond the February reading. The New York Stock Exchange fell shy of last week’s reading, so we’ll call it improvement for some.
The intermediate-term indicators are not yet overbought, so I’m thinking we should get a bout of volatility. If breadth turns sour enough to turn the indicators down, then I will become more concerned.