Wednesday, May 5, 2010

"IBD DOWNGRADES MARKET OUTLOOK"

Yesterday I asked "Equities: Anybody Else Watching the Distribution? ($SPX; SPY)".
Here's the answer via Pragmatic Capitalist:

Few investment services are as informative as Investors Business Daily. Their Big Picture section remains a must read for market participants. Though far from perfect, their buy and sell system has proven quite prescient – particularly in the last few years. In addition to getting you out before the crash of 2008 IBD’s Big Picture outlook also got you back into the rally for the overwhelming majority of the 75% rally.

They have officially changed their market outlook to “Market in Correction” which is their lowest market rating. The three huge distribution days in the last week are major warning flags of very heavy institutional selling and foreshadow what is likely to be a period of risk aversion in the coming weeks. Volume has been very heavy on the sell-offs and the rally has now transformed towards the potentially early stages of correction:

“Tuesday’s losses added to the market’s recent surge in institutional selling, giving the Nasdaq its fourth distribution day. Leading stocks also took some hits as the IBD 100 tumbled 3.2%. All the accumulated selling suggests that the market is heading into a correction. You never know if it will be an intermediate pullback or something larger. A modest correction could lead solid leaders like Baidu (BIDU) and Priceline (PCLN) to simply stage pullbacks in their current uptrends. The last correction, which began in January,lasted just over a month, with the Nasdaq falling 9.7%.”