Just when you thought the market was going to spread the wealth, it says, Not so fast. Let me just run down some numbers, so you can see what I mean.
Breadth. I thought Wednesday's breadth was good, not great, but let's call it an improvement. Then came Thursday and breadth was downright pathetic, considering it was negative most of the day. In the end, the net breadth on the New York Stock Exchange was +530. Keep in mind the S&P 500 was up 40 points.
Wednesday it was up 48 points and net breadth was +1,640. That's quite a difference.
When it comes to volume, it was pretty similar in terms of total volume. Wednesday was OK, not great with up volume chiming in at around 80%. Thursday's net volume was 57%. Hard to spin that positive much as I would like to, considering I really thought and would like the "others" to rally to play catch up.
Ahh, so all the action must be over on Nasdaq since that's where the fireworks are. I prefer to use net volume instead of the advance/decline figures for Nasdaq but we'll start with the advance decline line. Net breadth on Wednesday was +1,900. Not bad right? Thursday that same metric was +320. Let me remind you Nasdaq was up 157 on Wednesday and 188 (so even more!) on Thursday.
So, maybe if we use volume it will be a better read. Nope, sorry to report that will not be the case. Wednesday saw up volume at 81% and Thursday saw it at 59%. It's hard to even give this a consolation prize.
Here is the S&P on the verge of breaking out over 4,200 and the McClellan Summation Index managed to stop going down. It still needs another good day of breadth to turn it up. That's unusual. But that's thanks to the index movers doing what they do best: move the indexes.
Now all was not terrible. Nasdaq saw more new highs than lows for the first time since early March and only the fourth time since mid February. And the number of stocks making new highs on Nasdaq did increase to 120.
As you can imagine, sentiment has changed. Remember how bearish folks were just two days ago? All those folks who were bearish the market but long the handful of tech stocks? Well, they aren't so bearish the market anymore. The put/call ratio sunk to .83, which is the lowest since March 20 and prior to that, Feb. 2.
The 10-day moving average of this indicator is now lower than it was in April and seems intent on heading toward the low of early February (and prior to that spring of 2022).
Finally I should note that the Daily Sentiment Index (DSI) for the VIX is now 10. You can see it takes a lot to get it to single digits. It's possible we have a little shake up in the next few days and take that back up but the issue is we keep toying with it and with Nasdaq's DSI at 78, it's possible that if the VIX rises and then falls again next trip down finds Nasdaq's DSI in nosebleed territory and the VIX's at single digits.
In the meantime, I am still waiting for the "others" to play some catch up and so far they refuse to do it.
