Leaders Index 3-16

The market continued it's recent consolidation with the major averages bouncing around unchanged most of the day and finished about where it started. Volume increased dramatically as would be expected on an expiration day. Leading stocks continued to follow the same pattern of consolidating recent gains as the leaders index declined .68% on well above average volume, but still lower than the day before. This means there was no distribution in the index. The market is acting a little sloppy lately but so far there has not been any real damage done to either the market of the leaders. You never know if a consolidation like this will lead to a correction or higher prices so we must watch important support levels and the price and volume action for clues. One thing I noticed last week in the accumulation/distribution numbers is that the number of A and E ranked stocks both went up in the IBD and HGS series. It is to early to see any real trend in this but if it continues it could be an early sign of bifurcation in the market, which would be a big negative. We will have to see how things play out. Jerry