After yesterday's discussion of the U.S. Dollar/Euro and 2007 Stock Market,
today we will do an update on the Dow Theory Divergences. (See yesterday's
link on the 2007 Dollar/Stock update: Wednesday
Link)
The chart for the DOW, the Transports, and the SOX Indexes are below.
Note how the DOW has continued to climb up against a resistance line. The
DOW remains in an up trend from a daily peak it made in May.
The Dow Transports also made a daily peak in May, but what troubles Dow Theorists
is that it has made two lower highs since them. This was contrary to the DOW
and in "divergence with the DOW".
At the same time, the Semiconductor Index (SOX) has continued to trend divergently
down since the beginning of 2006.
Both Indexes are divergent with the DOW and this is an out-of-balance condition
for the markets. As with anything that is out-of-balance in nature, balance
is always re-established and so it will be with the markets.
Balance can only be established in one of two ways. First, the DOW could seek
balance with the other two indexes, but it would have to go into correction
to do this. Or, the Transports and the SOX could seek balance with the DOW
by trending up and making new highs.
So the question is, which will it be? The Fed has pumped in huge liquidity
amounts this year and has increased the old M3 by nearly 10%. This was done
to stimulate the economy away from a recession and to fight the inverted yield
curve proactively.
In spite of the stimulation, the Transports and the SOX were never capable
of exceeding the highs they made in the first half of the year. This puts the
Fed in a precarious position. Do they continue to inflate the money supply
if the results is a growing negative divergence in the indexes? At some
point, somebody is going to lose the battle. Either Bernanke is going to turn
the other indexes around, or they will over power his economic stimulation
attempts and the markets will fall.
As we end the year, Institutional Investors, have reduced both the amount
of their buying and the amount of their selling ... to the lowest levels since
this past September. They are "holding" what they bought, and not buying any
more.
If Bernanke can't do something to induce their confidence to start aggressive
buying again, then the smaller investor will have to carry the load of moving
the market up by himself in 2007 ... a difficult task because Institutional
activity accounts for over half of all the stock buying in the U.S.

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