Super Tuesday Markets

Talk about a Super Tuesday for the stock market, which spiked sharply higher on the first day of March building on the late February rally and advancing oil prices as the bankers help fight back.

China reported that its manufacturing PMI dropped to 49 in February (clearly recession territory, which for China is ugly) and not this bad since January 2009. This prompted the Chinese central bank late Monday to step up efforts to cushion demand amid plunging stock prices and a weakening currency. This in turn freed up the amount of cash the Chinese banks can lend.

This sparked a massive global rally, with Germany’s DAX climbing 2.3 percent and France’s CAC-40 adding 1.2 percent—so the bankers are in their again pumping up prices—at least to start the month of March off.

The bulls also took heart today when the US ISM Index for February checked in at 49.5, up from 48.2 in January. This is the fifth straight month the ISM Index has been below 50.0. That hasn’t happened since the throes of the financial crisis in 2009 but it was an improvement and that used as a reason for hope.

The central bankers spent a great deal of effort in turning around oil prices in mid-February and driving up stock prices to their highs at the end of February and we see they want to press this into March as well.

Who knows how the market will respond to Super Tuesday election result, but it should certainly be interesting.

Short-Term Overbought

Technically, the market remains extremely overbought with the Fed ramping like this, so this could start to fizzle in early March – likely after the next jobs report this Friday.

Technically, we are now pushing at the next resistance level at the weekly middle Bollinger Band line for the S&P 500 which is at 1995. The S&P 500 index closed above its 50-day simple moving average at 1978.

With today’s spike, P/E ratios are nearing 17 times forecasted earnings. This isn’t a recipe for a lasting rally with corporate earnings breaking down.

The key spot we want to be watching is oil prices.

The buying pushed crude oil prices through near term resistance and above its 50-day moving average ($34.10) by 65 cents to close at $34.40.

This is not too big of surprise with spring approaching. However, as I pointed out yesterday we have significant long-term resistance at the weekly middle Bollinger Band line at $36 a barrel and that’s not far away now.

Seasonality favors a positive market until mid-April but you have to wonder how many want to play Russian roulette with the geopolitical environment and an approaching 1st quarter that is sure to produce another negative quarter for the S&P 500 earnings.