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IWM

Despite a strong week, IWM remains in trading rangePrimary Chart: IWM / Russell 2000 Weekly Timeframe The Russell 2000 (IWM) is often a leading indicator in US markets. It led to the downside in early November 2021 after a false breakout out of its 2021 topping-pattern's resistance around $234. SPX topped nearly two months later on January 4, 2022. While small-caps are not necessarily always the first to make a move, it is something frequently cited by commentators and analysts. This is why the Russell 2000 is important for traders and investors to follow to maintain a deeper understanding of the broader US equity markets. Despite a very strong weekly close for IWM, its price remains in the lower half of its trading range. This trading range has contained price for the past 1.5 years, since the topping pattern's support (at the upper blue rectangle) broke down in January 2022. Unlike other major US indices like the Nasdaq 100, IWM has continued to struggle and remains well below its August 2022 and January / February 2023 highs. Two months ago, in a recent post titled " Something is Rotten in the State of Markets ," IWM's underperformance of SPX provided a basis for discussion as to why US equity markets may remain unhealthy despite the bullish price action YTD (see link below). A strong and long-lasting bull market should show signs of broad participation. Many breadth indicators have shown very narrow breadth. It's not a surprise, in fact, that SPX's rally and upside performance has been driven by 5 to 10 SPX names, with the other 490-495 flat, lagging, or up weakly. Supplementary Chart A This previous April 10 analysis displayed a hypothetical price path intended to reflect the possibility of more sideways and choppy price action in the intermediate term. The choppy price action has largely unfolded as expected (click the play / refresh arrow on the prior post from April 10, 2023). In fact, IWM's price at the time of the prior post was at $173.89, and a month later on May 8 it had closed almost at the same level around $172.72. Now IWM appears to be breaking above the recent trading range. Major levels of resistance appear on the Primary Chart as Fibonacci levels (the .618 retracement and the .50 retracement, which is not technically a Fibonacci proportion) as well as the anchored VWAP from the November 2021 ATH. How price responds to these levels will be important to watch in coming weeks especially after June 16, 2023 OPEX—a quad witching event. It is notable that IWM trades far below its major ATH VWAP from November 2021. Compare how IWM's price trades relative to this VWAP (labeled on the Primary Chart above) with how SPY's price trades relative to its ATH VWAP. SPY's VWAP anchored to its ATH is shown in Supplementary chart B below. Supplementary Chart B Finally, a relative chart of Russell 2000 vs. S&P 500 is helpful to examine these two major US equity indices and how IWM has performed YTD relative to the SPY / SPX. See Supplementary Chart C below. This relative chart shows IWM still in a downtrend relative to SPY. And it still shows that IWM vs. SPY remains below major resistance. Given that IWM is a leading index at times, it will be interesting to see whether what happens to the major resistance on this relative chart that was broken in early April 2023. Will it hold? Supplementary Chart C In summary, the small-cap stocks in the US equity market are lagging despite putting in a strong weekly performance this week of +3.33%. The primary trend in small caps remains sideways by any measure. Will IWM play catch up to the other main US indices like S&P 500 ( SP:SPX ) and Nasdaq 100 ( NASDAQ:NDX NASDAQ:QQQ )? No one knows for sure. But the liquidity problems plaguing the US economy tend to show up in the weakest names first, which usually are also the smallest names. Could IWM's underperformance be a sign of this liquidity stress? Or will it catch up to confirm that the current rally in NDX and SPY are perfectly healthy under the hood and headed to new all-time highs? Stay tuned. And thanks for reading this and for your encouragement and support. ________________________________________ Author's Comment: Thank you for reviewing this post and considering its charts and analysis. The author welcomes comments, discussion and debate (respectfully presented) in the comment section. Shared charts are especially helpful to support any opposing or alternative view. This article is intended to present an unbiased, technical view of the security or tradable risk asset discussed. Please note further that this technical-analysis viewpoint is short-term in nature. This is not a trade recommendation but a technical-analysis overview and commentary with levels to watch for the near term. This technical-analysis viewpoint could change at a moment's notice should price move beyond a level of invalidation. Further, proper risk-management techniques are vital to trading success. And countertrend or mean-reversion trading, e.g., trading a rally in a bear market, is lower probability and is tricky and challenging even for the most experienced traders. DISCLAIMER: This post contains commentary published solely for educational and informational purposes. This post's content (and any content available through links in this post) and its views do not constitute financial advice or an investment or trading recommendation, and they do not account for readers' personal financial circumstances, or their investing or trading objectives, time frame, and risk tolerance. Readers should perform their own due diligence, and consult a qualified financial adviser or other investment / financial professional before entering any trade, investment or other transaction.
AMEX:IWM
by SquishTrade
25
$MBLY U&R?NASDAQ:MBLY looks like and technically is a fairly new IPO. However, it was a publicly traded company prior to NASDAQ:INTC buying them in 2017. They re-IPO’d in 2022. I am playing this as an Undercut and Rally play. Earnings are behind them, and they beat expectations and guided sales and earnings higher. My stop is a close below today's low. A word of caution, they are located in Israel and may be affected in some way by the conflict going on over there. They have enjoyed several upgrades as well. See Chart for additional notations. Ideas, not investing / trading advice. Comments always welcome. Thanks for looking.
NASDAQ:MBLYLong
by jaxdog
Weekly Update: Do Small Caps Still Lead the Broader Markets?We've all heard that the small capitalized publicly traded companies lead the larger cap companies, more so featured in the broader indices. A quick look back shows the Small Caps Topped in November 2021, whereas the Nasdaq and SP500 did not top till January 2022. Subsequently, the IWM bottomed in June of 2022, and it took the NDX and SPX till October of 2022 to form a bottom. So it appears we do not have to go back too far to see this phenomenon is still valid. If this price action of leading the broader markets continues to persist, then the IWM is now poised to literally "Drop like Rock". A quick observation shows the small caps are around their lows bouncing slightly for wave 2 in our primary c-wave down. You can read my prior posts on the SPX and NDX indices but it appears if you want to know if the recent bullish feeling rally in the DJIA, NDX and SP500 has sustainable legs...look no further than the IWM. Best to all, Chris
AMEX:IWMShort
by maikisch
$PCAR On watch for U&RNASDAQ:PCAR Beat Earrings and revenue and has been building a base for about 4 months now. I have this on my watchlist for an Undercut and Rally trade. All TBD. See chart for notations and thought process. Ideas, not investing / trading advice. Comments always welcome. Thanks for looking. PACCAR (PCAR) reported earnings of $2.34 per share on revenue of $8.70 billion for the third quarter ended September 2023. The consensus earnings estimate was $2.07 per share on revenue of $7.99 billion. The Earnings Whisper number was $2.18 per share. The company beat expectations by 7.34% while revenue grew 23.20% on a year-over-year basis. PACCAR Inc designs, manufactures and distributes light, medium and heavy duty trucks and related aftermarket parts.
NASDAQ:PCARLong
by jaxdog
Advanced Bull Flag ConceptsHave you ever wondered why price action sometimes forms a bull flag pattern? Have you ever wondered if there is a way to predict whether a bull flag will break out before it actually does so? In this post, I will try to address these questions by presenting a couple of theories about the nature of bull flags. Bull Flag Theories (1) The flag structure of a bull flag tends to form along Fibonacci levels, with the ideal flag proportion being an approximated golden ratio to the flagpole; and (2) Fibonacci and regression analyses can provide useful insight into whether price will successfully break out of its bull flag pattern, sometimes long before price even attempts to do so. I will try my best to clearly explain both theories in detail below. Note: Although this analysis is also generally true for bull pennants, bear flags, and bear pennants, to keep things simple I will focus solely on bull flags. Additionally, this analysis is generally true across timeframes. Part I - The Basics of a Bull Flag First, let's begin with the basics. As shown in the image below, bull flags form when an asset is in a strong uptrend. The uptrend forms the flagpole of the bull flag structure. The flag structure forms when price consolidates, usually in a falling trend. This consolidation phase is often characterized by price oscillators rotating back down while the price retraces only a small part of its prior upward move. From a market psychology perspective, bull flags often form when most market participants who bought the asset continue to hold it expecting the uptrend to resume, while only a minority of market participants sell (or short the asset) as its price corrects downward. The bull flag pattern is a continuation pattern because it reflects the market's general expectation that price will eventually resume its upward move. Once the price definitively breaks above the upper channel of the flag (often with strong momentum and high volume), the bull flag pattern is validated. Upon breakout, the expected move up is equal to the vertical height of the flagpole. Part II - The flag structure of a bull flag tends to form along Fibonacci levels, with the ideal flag proportion being an approximated golden ratio to the flagpole Here's where things begin to get interesting. Below is the golden ratio. Two quantities, a and b (where a > b ), form the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. (See the equation below) The equation above shows the Greek letter phi which denotes the golden ratio. Phi is equivalent to a/b when such ratio is also equivalent to (a + b)/a. Although bull flags can take various forms, it is my hypothesis, based on chart analysis and research, that the most perfectly structured bull flags (ones that also have the highest probability of successful breakouts) occur when the flag forms a golden ratio to the flagpole. Mathematically, this means that the vertical height of the flagpole is equivalent to (a + b) and the vertical height (i.e. the width) of the flag is equivalent to b. This is also to say that price retraces down to the 0.382 Fibonacci level as measured by applying Fibonacci retracement levels along the flagpole (or to the 0.618 point on the vertical height of the flagpole if one measures from the bottom to top). I realize that this can be quite confusing, so let’s walk through some visualizations. Let's first visualize this hypothesis using the golden rectangle. Below is an image of the golden rectangle. A golden rectangle is composed of a square (with sides equal to a) and a smaller golden rectangle (with width equal to b and length equal to a). Now let's rotate the golden rectangle to better visualize the hypothesized flag pattern. The bull flag is hypothetically an approximation of the golden rectangle, whereby the width of the flag is in a golden ratio approximation to the length of the flagpole. In the illustration below, there are multiple bull flags contained within a Fibonacci spiral. The spiral is made up of golden rectangles, with each larger golden rectangle containing a smaller golden rectangle inside it. The smaller golden rectangle is the flag structure, and the length of the larger golden rectangle is the flagpole. One can think of the Fibonacci spiral and the golden rectangles as a series of bull flags that build on top of each other in a repeating pattern. In this diagram, price is represented by the increasing length of the sides of each golden rectangle. In other words, the price on a chart can be seen as spiraling higher after each bull flag breakout. Of course, not all bull flags form a structure that approximates the golden ratio, but it is my belief that in forming a bull flag, price action is aspiring to achieve as close of a golden ratio approximation as it can. I believe that the bull flags that best approximate the golden ratio structure also present the highest probability for a successful break out. To learn more about Fibonacci spirals, including the golden spiral that Fibonacci spirals approximate, you can check out this Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org Part III - Fibonacci and regression analyses can provide useful insight into whether price will successfully break out of its bull flag pattern, sometimes long before price even attempts to do so. To see how Fibonacci levels and regression analysis can give insight into whether a bull flag will break out or break down before it does so, let's consider an example. Let’s consider the massive bull flag that the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) formed in 2021. In 2021, the monthly chart of IWM formed what appeared to be a bull flag, as shown below. Now let's see why Fibonacci analysis and regression analysis were warning that this bull flag was not likely to break out successfully. First, IWM's price did not retrace to a Fibonacci level before attempting a breakout (when using the pole as the Fibonacci retracement reference point). In the chart below, we see that price tried to break out, without even so much as retracing down to the highest Fibonacci retracement level: $196.71. By not undergoing Fibonacci retracement, price did not give its oscillators the opportunity to rotate back down fully. Instead, price remained overextended at the time it attempted to break out. Now let's look at regression analysis. Below is a log-linear regression channel that contains IWM's entire price history. As noted in my prior posts, a regression channel simply indicates how far above or below the mean (or average) price an asset's current price is trading. In the regression channel above, the red line is the mean price, the upper channel line is 2 standard deviations above the mean, and the lower channel line is 2 standard deviations below the mean. A successful breakout of the bull flag would have taken IWM's price way above its regression channel, to a level that is too many standard deviations above its mean price for us not to question the probability of the breakout’s success. Achieving the full measured move up would have been extremely unlikely, assuming that the regression channel is valid and that price tends to revert back to its mean over time. What was more likely than a breakout was a breakdown, and a reversion back to the mean, which is what ended up happening with IWM. Another interesting note about IWM’s bull flag is that it presented a false breakout in November 2021. This false breakout was presenting multiple warnings signs including being a UTAD test of a Wyckoff Distribution. As shown below, however, another important clue that the November 2021 breakout would likely fail was that the breakout was not confirmed when comparing IWM to the money supply (M2SL). See the chart below. One can interpret this chart to mean that in late 2021, IWM’s price was rising because the central bank was increasing the money supply, but not due to improving strength of the underlying companies that comprise the ETF. Using the money supply as a ratio to an asset elucidates the true inherent strength of the asset's value. To understand more about why the money supply can be used in this manner, you can check out my post below. Part IV - Additional Comments I have a few additional comments. I usually use Fibonacci levels on a log-scale chart to identify Fibonacci spirals because Fibonacci spirals are logarithmic spirals. However, when using Fibonacci levels based on log scale, the ratios, percentages and numbers, can seem quite confusing because they are logarithmically adjusted. If you choose to replicate my process, please be mindful of this. While using log-scale charts is critical for higher timeframes (e.g. the monthly chart or higher), I have not identified much benefit to using it on shorter timeframes. In a prior post, I noted that Plug Power (PLUG) is currently forming one of the best-looking log-scale, golden ratio bull flags I have ever seen. If my above hypotheses are true, I would expect to see PLUG move dramatically higher in the years to come. For more information about PLUG, you can read my post linked below. (This is not a solicitation to buy PLUG. Please do your own research and carefully consider all risks.) At the risk of making this post too long and too dense, I just want to briefly note that it is also my hypothesis, based on observation and research, that the golden ratio is where many S-curve dilemmas are solved. If you don't know what an S-curve dilemma is and you'd like to read about this you can see my post below about Jumping S-Curves . In short, an S-curve dilemma is another way of conceptualizing the question of whether a bull flag will break out or break down. I hope that someone finds value in this post. I spent a lot of time studying, researching, analyzing, and cogitating the mathematical nature of price action to reach many of the conclusions here. Thank you for your valuable time in reading my post.
AMEX:IWMEducation
by SpyMasterTrades
51