Weekend Index Review

I trust everyone is having a relaxing long weekend before we plunge headlong into almost three solid months of uninterrupted mayhem. Let’s look at some of the more important markets.

There’s certainly a theme to these, which is that we are, on the whole, range-bound. The maddening thing about range-bound markets is that one is either terrified of a breakout or excited about a breakdown, but neither seems to take place.

We just keep ping-ponging between the two levels, as with the Nasdaq Composite.

The Chinese market is either about to violate its descending trendline or resume its multi-month breakdown. This became too uncertain for me to stick with it.

The Dow Industrials at least has offered the clarity of being below its broken trendline, anchored to the Iran War low.

The Nasdaq 100’s diamond top has sputtered into meaninglessness, and we’re just traipsing along within a gap-defined price range.

One of the strongest markets out there is the S&P 100, which is very near lifetime highs and could easily break out.

The small caps are also near lifetime highs, although it is far more vulnerable to strengthening interest rates.

As with the Nasdaq in general, the semiconductor index had been sporting a sensational topping pattern, but there’s been enough AI optimism lately to squelch this. Friday’s action alone pretty much wrecked the pattern’s potential.

For all its reputation as a bearish month, September hasn’t offered much weakness so far. The S&P 500 isn’t quite as robust looking as the S&P 100, but it would require taking out last week’s lows to give the bears a clear pathway.

Dow Transports are getting close to a potential trendline failure.

Incredibly, for all that’s going on in the world, volatility remains at Epstein levels, and we’re grinding around at multi-year lows. Truly beyond belief.