When I last wrote in late June, the Dow just dipped below its exalted 200-day moving average. The media went wild! Well, they talked a lot about it, anyway.

I yawned. And as of today, the Dow did not collapse and is quite comfortably back above its 200-day average. It’s also at a 5-month high – despite the tariffs. The Nasdaq hit another all-time high this week. And FAANGs keep on truckin’. Well, maybe all except Netflix but it was always the red-headed step child in the group.

Amazon and Apple moved ever closer to $1 trillion market caps – each!

With homage to Warner Wolf, let’s go to the charts!

Pick your breakout for the S&P 500 (green lines). This chart looks pretty good although it is at the top of a trend channel (the bottom is in red; the top is omitted). What that means is that there is a good argument for another short-term swoon to test the red line.

But, you say, most of the gain is due to the FAANGs and a few of their cousins. True dat – on a valuation point of view. But that does not mean the other stocks are not going up, too.

Here is the NYSE advance-decline line. Looks pretty healthy to me.

And check this out. Today is Thursday, July 19, 2018 as I write.

The Dow is down over 100 points intraday but market breadth reported by Barron’s shows more advancing stocks than declining and plenty of new 52-week highs.

But that brings me to why I am not a rabid bull. Look at the number of new 52-week lows. That’s a lot for a market that is so close to all-time highs.

Another thing I don’t like is that the transports are badly lagging. However, I’ll give that a wash because the Russell 2000 look pretty good.

What about the banks? Not looking that great, either.

And Utilities? They look pretty strong. Hey, what happened to rising interest rates? This is a defensive sector so the fact that it is so hot does make me nervous.

And commodities? I never liked gold this year but I did like the others. The Bloomberg index failed to hold a breakout and now has a downside trend break. What happened to the demand by an improving economy.

My conclusion is that this bull market is not over but we are now starting to see the finish line. I won’t say exactly where it is but overall, I think the fun ends next year. The wildcard being some sort of colored wave at the midterm elections. Red, blue, or the more likely black and blue.