EB Daily Market Report - Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Dear Members.

A brief update today as Tom is in travel mode.

The bulls continue to control the action with both the S&P and Dow is positive territory and only the NASDAQ slightly red.

Trader's don't seem to care that monthly options expire on Friday with a very large, disproportionate number of cals to puts, both on the major indexes and many individual stocks as well. Of course that can change on a dime and with some heavyweight tech stocks including TSLA, NFLX and IBM reporting after the bell, we might get a clue as to what to expect in the very near term.

As Tom has pointed out a number of times, history shows that today starts the second worst market week of the year. Will history repeat itself or is there simply too much positive momentum to derail the bulls? We'll find out soon enough but many important technical signs are showing the current rally to be long in the tooth so being aggressive on the long side at this time could bring additional risk. In fact, it might be a good time to at least consider locking in some hard earned profits just in case we see traders beginning to head for the exits.

The S&P got as high as 4578 today so that is a level the bulls will need to clear if they hope to take the market higher. To the downside, the first level of support should be right around 4500.

Tom will be back tomorrow with his regular Daily Market Report.

At your service,

John Hopkins