You Know What They're Looking At? Us

The relief rally since Christmas has been convincing enough to the point where one could easily (and many have) taken shorter-term timeframes and inferred from the price action that a brand new uptrend has already been set in motion. 

That working thesis may eventually come to fruition. However, until we see actual evidence on the daily timeframes, at least, extrapolating from shorter-term timeframes look to be bastardizing sound technical analysis more than anything. In fact, various stock market algos seemingly were programmed to run stocks up enough over the last month to convince most traders we were, in fact, totally in the clear again. 

As we stress periodically for Members, analyzing charts and using technical analysis is not witchcraft, voodoo, the secret sauce to become a billionaire, or anything close to that. Instead, we use charts to manage and define risk as objectively as humanly possible. Technical analysis will always have its vocal detractors, which inherently makes using it to, again, manage and define risk all to the more viable--Nothing more, nothing less. 

Thus, turning to the updated daily chart for QQQ, ETF for the top-100 stocks in the Nasdaq, it is clear that the pattern of lower swing highs since the correction began early last October 2018 has not been breached. 

In other words, we are not in a new uptrend, just yet. Moreover, I did not much care for the price action in many names late-last week, opting to move to full cash into the three-day weekend to come back fresh this week. For now, despite some interesting strength in a pot stock like CRON, with CGC basing under $45 nicely, I am taking my cues from the growth indices: IWM and QQQ for starters, to see if buyers have the gumption to step back in on this dip in the face of a broad market multi-month correction still in force on various index daily charts.