By The Associated Press
Thursday was the day the Dow Jones industrial clawed its way back into positive territory after six losing days in a row.
The Dow had been on its longest losing streak since August before gaining almost 20 points on Thursday. Stocks got a boost from a drop in new unemployment applications, as well as Spain's move to take over a debt-laden bank. Investors took that as a sign that Spain was working aggressively to avoid needing a bailout.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 19.98 points, or 0.2 percent, to close at 12,855.04.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 3.41 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,357.99.
The Nasdaq composite fell 1.07 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,933.64.
For the week:
The Dow is down 183.23 points, or 1.4 percent.
The S&P 500 is down 11.11 points, or 0.8 percent.
The Nasdaq is down 22.70 points, or 0.8 percent.
For the year so far:
The Dow is up 637.48 points, or 5.2 percent.
The S&P 500 is up 100.39 points, or 8 percent.
The Nasdaq is up 328.49 points, or 12.6 percent.
interesting, as the highest setting for ROC is 100
Hi, Dennis,
I'm charting on my trading software which is excellent. It has a 120 setting for ROC. The software package is very sophisticated. I am very satisfied with it.
i just use MC, but if I upgrade, what is the name of your software?
Hi Dennis, You can actually open a paper trading account at Trademonster.com totally free and without giving out a lot of personal information. It has great graphs and also has something called Recognia that provides bearish and bullish patterns for any stock/etf that you are researching. I have been practicing my trading using this platform. It also has options including spreads. I think you will like it. It has the ROC indicator that can be set at 120, as well as other nice technical information.
thanks, I will check out those MACD settings. On the MC slow stochastics I do not use the default settings, but rather %K-14, %D-3, slow %D-5.
Beware! Most country ETF's (outside the US) have recent monthly red triangles. Do you believe the US indexes will keep their green monthlies with the rest of the world dragging down?
Good point!
Good trade Mike P., this is the time [about the only time in our book] to play the refiners.
The markets are deeply oversold and I expect a bounce. I sold my Ultra Short S&P ETF Wednesday and went long Valero at 22. They are coining money because the crack spread is around $30 and the stock looks good technically. The Euro should also rally and gold should also bounce. Now that everyone is scared the stock market can go up again.
After today's action, I am in your camp on that stock market bounce on Mon or, more likely Tues., got out of my puts and took a small position in weekly SPY 136 calls near the close.
The close was worse than the averages suggest only bouncing on the close with what appeared to short covering. The last 15-20 minutes was abysmal making new lows for the day before the closing bounce, in fact. tomorrow I would not be surprised to see the average challenge yesterday's lows. If the SP500 breaks 343, and stays down on Mon and Tues, the stochastics would embed, and we could see the averages ride the Bollinger Band down. However, the Central Banks may ride to the rescue.
Good call Dennis, I use the MACD but not at the recommended settings. For me it gives off to many faults signals of trend reversals. I put my settings at 75 & 100 for the slow & fast periods, 25 for the signal period (it calms the MACD down). It works much better for me this way.
At this setting when the MACD gives a trend reversal it’s more likely to happen (for the long term). My MACD at this setting gave me a trend reversals warning this week, the S&P is riding support at this moment. Like you mentioned if the S&P closes below 1,343.13 with my MACD saying trend reversal warning, we may see a drop to 1,286.92 a 61.8% pull back. Tomorrows a big day, soon we’ll see .
Adelino, I just took a look at the MACD settings and I really like it. I also use the Rate of Change indicator with a setting of 120. Hardly anybody uses the ROC indicator. At 120 it indicates major trend changes. Its default setting is 12 for shorter term trends.
Thank you for the info.
You’re very welcome gg cassell, I’ve been using those setting for some time now & it really helps me see the strength behind the overall trend. 😉