Leaders Index 1-16-14

The major averages opened lower today and were flat to down the whole session. They ended well off their lows and actually near their intraday highs. It was overall a pretty flat day, which after two strong rally days like we had on Tuesday and Wednesday is actually pretty positive. Volume was lower across the board which is good on a consolidation day after an advance. The COMPQ was again the strongest major average with a gain of .09% while the SPY was down .13%. Leading stocks were mixed with some like the solar stocks strong along with other names like FEYE while others got hit pretty hard like GNRC and HLF. I did something today I usually don’t do with a leaders index. NUS declined today another 26.41% and with yesterday’s decline is off almost by half in the last two days. As this was distorting the index I replaced it with SPLK. This did not effect the number of industry groups in the index. The index with the change was up .33% on the day on lower and well below average volume. Even with NUS in the index it would have been down .93% even with GNRC declining 7.87%. The index with it’s new component actually set new highs today on both a price and a relative strength basis. Overall the market and leading stocks are still on solid ground and we will likely see higher prices in at least the short term. Jerry