Courtesy of Blain.
U.S. indexes tried to make it four straight up days but afternoon selling put a stop to that. Nothing serious though; the S&P 500 fell 0.46% and the NASDAQ 0.15%. While most look at Alcoa’s earnings as the start of earnings season it really begins this week with 36 S&P 500 companies set to report. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) report before the bell Tuesday and Intel (INTC) after the close. We’ve already heard some issues with the dollar so the next month it will be interesting to hear how much blame for any misses goes to the currency.
Under pressure from the strong dollar and low oil prices, corporate profit expectations are significantly negative for the first time in six years, with Thomson Reuters reporting a likely 2.9% drop in S&P 500 net income.
The indexes are not much changes from end of last week; the NASDAQ is trying to break out while the S&P 500 is sort of ho hum in no man’s land.
The Russell 2000 – which we have noted all of 2015 as a new leadership area continues to be ahead of the other indexes as there is not much exposure to the strong dollar in these companies.
The NYSE McClellan Oscillator is still positive but just so.
After viewing some charts, Tesla Motors (TSLA) is an interesting one. You can see a series of downtrends.  In both Nov and Feb the stock looked like it was trying to put in a reversal and immediately a wave of selling hit within a week. Now it is trying a third time. It is about a week into this reversal attempt so it will be interesting to see if it follows the last 2 attempts or truly can break out this time.
Netflix (NFLX) continued its breakout from Friday but by and large a lot of the tried and true momentum stocks are not following along. Which is interesting considering the NASDAQ is not too far from highs. UBS AG analyst Douglas Mitchelson raised shares to buy from neutral.
While we don’t discuss foreign markets much the move in the Chinese market is one we’ve discussed a few times in the past month and surge continues!
While it’s difficult to play the Chinese market in the U.S. we’ve noted the rotation into Chinese stocks on U.S. exchanges the past few weeks. Some of those retreated today – see 58.com (WUVA) and Sina (SINA).
