Fly Away, May

Economic data Friday was good for a change but that wasn’t true for overseas economies where drip, drip, drip of weak data persisted.

But in the U.S. most data were positive. After dreary earnings and forecasts for retailers, Retail Sales were positive. But it seems logical to accept future guidance vs old news doesn’t it?

Consumer Confidence rose sharply perhaps this is so much old news to. It may well be now that “good news is bad” now if the Fed raises interest rates on the back of it. (Sigh).

The markets didn’t like any of this as it sold-off sharply taking declines down markets down for the third straight week turning previous YTD gains to losses. Volume once again was lighter than recent averages for SPY but still modestly higher than previous 3-month averages.

Now, I did say I wouldn’t post comments on Friday but losses were sharp enough to pull me to my desk once again. Monday will tell the tail if now is the time to put more shorts on. I’ll relay this to subscribers this weekend.

There were no standout losers this day, they all were weak. Only gold, bonds and biotech, oddly, finished with notably gains.

Below is the heat map from Finviz reflecting those ETF market sectors moving higher (green) and falling (red). Dependent on the day (green) may mean leveraged inverse or leveraged short (red).

Volume as I indicated was lower than the last three-month average. Breadth per the WSJ was quite negative.

Chart Of The Day

So, I didn’t write much for Friday, but I’ll be plenty busy this weekend.

Enjoy your weekend.

Let’s see what happens.