Characterizing the Indexes

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Up, up, and away! Let’s take a fresh look at the big indexes out there.

The Dow Jones Composite, as is the habit of so many assets lately, hit yet another lifetime high. That wedge has tidily confined prices for over a year now.

slopechart COMP

The NASDAQ Composite isn’t quite in lifetime high territory quite yet. It wouldn’t take much to do so, particularly with a tidal wave of earnings coming from huge tech firms next week and, even moreso, the week after.

slopechart COMPQ

The more narrow NASDAQ 100 did, however, reach a lifetime high.

slopechart NDX

There are those two words again – – Lifetime High – – for the S&P 100. Optimism abounds!

slopechart OEX

Small caps, however, are still being left out in the cold (relatively speaking). This has been meandering for months now, with no clear direction and certainly no gusto, either bullish or bearish.

slopechart RUT

As you know, the H&S on the semiconductors got wrecked a couple of weeks ago, although it is still beneath its broken uptrend.

slopechart SOX

The charts above are pretty much just the past year or two, but I’ve deliberately selected a much longer period of the Dow Utilities, below, to illustrate what might be an important shift in trend.

slopechart UTIL

Volatility, naturally, has been getting the life strangled out of it for many months, as we sink directly into the mid-teens.

slopechart VIX

Lastly, the final bastion of bearish possibilities – – the last ursine creature standing – – is the oil sector.

slopechart XOI