Can The S&P Breakout?

5 day 15 min chart (Lower Close than Open 4/5 days

Good morning futures are up a bit this morning, Silver is on fire, Gold is up 6$. The S&P gained 18.61 points during the week. The range for the week was 32.59 points, 2.48%. The four week RSI of the four indices (SPX, Dow, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000) is 68. In most visible ways, this last week seemed quite bullish. But rallies that close lower than the open in four of the five session of the week, doesn't feel real bullish.

On Friday, China's PMI came in above expectations, which has nipped the worries about global recovery in the bud. And while the European PMI reports showed a bit of a pullback in the PMI levels, the bottom line is the reports show that the recovery is ongoing. But the big news this morning is in the U.S. The Labor Department reported the FAUX Non-farm Payrolls rose in the month of March by 216,000. This was just above the consensus estimates for an increase of 192,000. The private sector (aka the household survey) showed gains of 230K jobs, which again was above the estimates. The nation’s Unemployment fell once again to 8.8%, which was below the expectations for a reading of 8.9% (February was 8.9%).

The first session of the quarter began with a significant gap higher, moved higher for a few minutes then quickly sold off several points. But before 10:00 am the S&P began to climb higher and moved about eight points upward putting the high of the day on the chart at 11:36. Most of the next three hours traded sideways with a slight negative bias but before 3:00 pm sellers arrived and took the index down sharply seven points. The final forty-five minutes of the session bounced but it wasn't a particularly strong bounce. The index closed just above one third of the intraday trading range.

In terms of breadth Friday was the strongest day of the week (Breadth Indicators are also signaling more gains to come). Friday's volume was higher than Thursday's; it was the highest volume of the week although it was a light volume week. What stands out is that the volume was light early in the day as the market was climbing, then volume spiked higher with the late afternoon selling. For the S&P Index there were 343 components advancing and 132 components declining. On the NYSE 3,150 issues were traded with 2,107 advancing issues and 941 retreating issues, a ratio of 2.24 to one advancing. There were 383 new highs and 12 new lows. The five day moving average of New Highs is 223 while the five day moving average of New Lows is 13 and the ten day moving average of Net Advancing is 730. The Net Advancing data indicates a bullish trend.

Advancing volume was higher at a ratio of 2.89 to one. The closing TRIN was 0.77 and the final tick was 1087. The five day average of TRIN is 1.23 and the ten day average of TRIN is 1.31. The NYSE Composite Index gained 0.77% today while the S&P gained 0.49%.

For the NYSE, relative to the previous 30 session average, volume was -14.44% below the average. Of the last 15 sessions 4 sessions ended with volume greater than the previous rolling 30 day average volume. Of the last 30 sessions, 20 sessions ended on a positive tick, 7 of last 10. For the S&P , the day's volume was 88.4% of the average daily volume for the last year. Volume was 99.6% of the last 10 day average and 114.3% of the previous day’s volume.

75.8% of the S&P are above their five day moving average, 82.2% are above their 10 day average, 83.2% are above their 20 day moving average, 70.8% are above their 50 day moving average, and 87.4% are above their 200 day moving average.

Sectors stronger than the S&P for Friday:
- Financials -- Outperformed by +25%.
- Industrials -- Outperformed by +38%.
- Consumer Staples -- Outperformed by +6%.
- Utilities -- Outperformed by +24%.
- Health Care -- Outperformed by +4%.
- Consumer Discretionary -- Outperformed by +19%.

Sectors weaker than S&P for Friday:
- Basic Materials -- Underperformed by -10%.
- Energy -- Underperformed by -10%.
- Technology -- Underperformed by -68%.