Friday’s, short-lived lurch upward after stronger employment numbers in the US was enough to provoke a small cascade of further top extensions in various equity market measures, all at daily scale. In the US there were small cap and Value-line index signals, which add to the mid-cap we described in Friday’s edition:
There were additional signals in the Aerospace and Retail sectors. Minerals and mining also extended again (not shown – see last edition for the chart):
Finally there were also extensions in some other countries’ markets:
All this suggests that the latest rally has either already stalled or that it soon will. There was a turn due last Friday (the high day so far) which means we think the highs were already reached that day. Our note on top extensions last week points out that markets rarely rise, extend then immediately drop as some kind of ‘top’ usually has to form before weakness can begin but sometimes there is a ‘spike’ top and that may have occurred here.
The longer-term picture remains cloudy. We also saw weekly-scale compressions last week in both the Dow and the Dutch AEX futures. These may indicate that the broad trading range that we have seen will soon break but offer no clue as to the direction of that break.
