Leaders Index 4-26-17

The market spent most of the session in slightly positive territory, doing a good job of holding on to the gains of the last two days. Selling in the last half hour erased those small gains and the major averages closed about unchanged. The COMPQ finished absolutely flat with a change of .00% while the SPX was off by .05%. The late weakness saw all the major averages close at their intraday trading lows. Volume was mixed, slightly lower on the Nasd and slightly higher on the New York, according to esignal. The differences were so small that other data feeds could end up with different results. Leading stocks were a bit higher on the session with the leaders index gaining .14% on extremely low volume. The index closed in the upper half of its trading range, a good sign. I removed WLDN from the index because its large decline yesterday distorted the index. I usually don’t do this but I wanted the index to better reflect the overall market. There are still 22 stocks, a good cross section. The action of the market today was positive overall. It did lose the small gains it had earlier, but held the sizable gains of the last two days. This is good as it means that market participants are not selling into higher prices and are likely anticipating further gains. The market is acting well and all the breaks into new high ground that we saw earlier in the week are holding. The market appears to want to go higher in at least the near term. Jerry