Market comments for Aug. 3rd

Even with yesterday's high on the Dow and S&P 500, we didn't break above the top resistance lines I drew on my previous post on the Dow and S&P 5 year charts on Saturday. Today's data is sobering yesterday's drunken surge in the market. Personal Income came in flat at 0% gain. Personal Spending had no change as well. Factory Orders were down -1.2%, more than consensus estimates of -1.0%. Pending Home Sales were also down -2.6% and -18.6% below June 2009 levels. Expectations were that the number was coming in at -5% for June, so that number was better than expected.

The markets are down about 0.5% after 1 hour of trading now. The big number for the week will be the Unemployment rate for July. Expectations are that Unemployment will rise to 9.6% from 9.5%. Initial Claims also come out on Thursday and expectations are for that number to come in at 460K Claims.

Market outlook for the week ahead: June 29thth-July 3rd

I thought you might like to see the data that will be announced by day this coming week and have found the Bloomberg survey of leading indicators. On Tuesday, Options Expire for the Qtr. Here's the list to watch for:

Bloomberg Survey

================================================================
Release Period Prior Median
Indicator Date Value Forecast
================================================================
Case Shiller Monthly YO 6/30 April -18.7% -18.8%
Case Shiller Monthly In 6/30 April 140.0 n/a
Consumer Conf Index 6/30 June 54.9 55.2
ADP Payroll ,000’s 7/1 June -532 -390
Construct Spending MOM% 7/1 May 0.8% -0.6%
ISM Manu Index 7/1 June 42.8 44.5
ISM Prices Index 7/1 June 43.5 47.0
Pending Homes MOM% 7/1 May 6.7% 0.5%
Nonfarm Payrolls ,000’s 7/2 June -345 -350
Unemploy Rate % 7/2 June 9.4% 9.6%
Manu Payrolls ,000’s 7/2 June -156 -150
Hourly Earnings MOM% 7/2 June 0.1% 0.1%
Hourly Earnings YOY% 7/2 June 3.1% 2.9%
Avg Weekly Hours 7/2 June 33.1 33.1
Initial Claims ,000’s 7/2 27-Jun 627 615
Cont. Claims ,000’s 7/2 20-Jun 6738 6740
Factory Orders MOM% 7/2 May 0.7% 0.8%
=============================================================

At the close on Friday the Put to Call ratio closed at 0.81 and the VIX closed at 25.93, the lowest value since mid September last year when all the problems with the Sub Prime loans and Banks began.

The Dow continues to hug the downtrend line which started a year ago and was shown in my post last Thursday. I expect it to continue to go down and I expect the S&P 500 to do the same. I am still invested in my ETF Ultra shorts TZA and will hold on to this until we hit back at the lows of 7,300 on the Dow or if we go and retest the low of 6,440, which many believe eventually we will need to successfully retest, before a true Bull market Rally will begin.