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Today was a mixed day, and the GMI remains at +5, as we complete day 17 of this QQQQ uptrend (U-17). 
There were 35 successful 10 day new highs and only 11 "successful" new lows. More than 70% of the 49 stocks that hit new highs 10 days ago, closed higher today than they closed 10 days ago. There were 155 new 52 week highs in my universe of nearly 4,000 stocks, and only 23 new lows. What is somewhat troubling is that only 36% of the Nasdaq 100 stocks rose today, 32% of the S&P 500 stocks and only 7% (2) of the 30 Dow stocks. So, while there were a large number of new highs, most stocks did not rise today.
Still, some of the stocks I have been discussing hit new highs today, including GOOG, BOOM, NSI, MW, PNRA (I own some of these). A sign of a bull market top is weakness in the leaders. We will therefore continue to monitor these stocks for any signs of weakness–clearly they are still very strong. Moreover, given the strength of the GMI, I am not in a defensive mode yet. It will be interesting to see whether the market can bounce back tomorrow……………………………………..
In my prior post, I said I was an orthodox agnostic when it came to believing in a rationale for market moves. Since then I read an interview in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, June edition, with Michael W. Covel. Mr. Covel recently published the book, Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets. In the interview, Covel says, "A trend-follower doesn’t need to know the "why" of market behavior during trends. They just need to know the price. A lot of trend-followers don’t even want the name of the markets. They just want the price data and they can tell you whether they can trade it by the price data alone. I think this kind of mentality is odd to most people."(p. 55)
I guess Darvas, Livermore, O’Neil and a host of other gurus would be called trend-followers today. I don’t feel so weird about my orthodox agnostic comment anymore. I am in good company. However, Covel is describing the most extreme case of trend following, someone who needs no fundamental information about a stock other than its price and volume–an approach we call in my field, blind empiricism. Most of the successful gurus I admire wanted to trade with the trend, but also factored in other information about the company’s profitability and industry. By the way, I was disappointed with Covel’s book. It merely makes the case that specific trend-followers have been successful, without providing any details of how these people achieved their success. Borrow it from your local library.
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