Strange day Monday: More new yearly lows than highs for first time since March 30 and lowest number of ATHs, 13, since 12 last March 31; That is when the February to March decline ended, see daily chart of SPY. See my blog for my attempt to explain this rare occurrence. Meanwhile, 6 of the 13 ATHs today were oil & gas related stocks, see the list on my blog.

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Here are the six stocks that traded at an ATH (all-time high) on Monday. All of them, but CQP, closed 1.9X or more above their price a year ago, shown in last column.

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As you know, I focus on buying stocks at or near their ATH. Usually there are only a small number each day that do so. For example, last week, Monday through Friday, the totals were: 43,41, 28, 28, 20. Thus, each day  <1% of the 6,500+ US stocks in TC200’s database traded at an ATH. I like to buy stocks trading at an ATH because they are exhibiting incredible relative strength, beating 99% of all other stocks. The last time that there were so few ATHs and there were more stocks reaching a 52 week low than high occurred late last March just before the markets bottomed and took off on a nice sustained tradable rise. But back then my moving averages had declined to multi-week lows. That is not the situation now. So, I am not ready to say that this low number of ATHs indicates a bottom but something else may be  happening. This daily chart of SPY shows no decline currently like we experienced in late March. So what does this all mean? I suggest that market makers and other traders can no longer push many stocks to ATHs. Maybe these statistics are saying the market is really overbought and near a major top?  I remain mainly in TBIL in my trading account and have a few very small positions of individual stocks. As a recent retiree, I am a chicken and have one foot out the door….

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Day 18 of $QQQ short term up-trend and weekly chart below shows longer term trend remains up, thus far, unless the Iran war disrupts it. See also the GMI table.

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It may be  hard to believe, but my indicators still show QQQ in  short term and longer term up-trends. These indicators saved me from significant declines many times. However, the weekly closes designated by the gray solid line show QQQ to be flat since the May/June peaks at all-time highs. September is typically the weakest month of the year for the markets. We may have to wait until the next earnings release period in October to break from this plateau.

The GMI is at 4, of 6, and remains on a Green signal.