Not only did machine tool sales fail to get the traditional big year-end bump, despite 2014 being an IMTS year, but February's data is out and it is still burrowing…
Excerpted from NFTRH 336…
US Stock Market
We start with our perspective chart in case there is any doubt. Janet Yellen is not to be taken so seriously, but the distortions built into this chart by post-2008 policy are.
We will manage markets by daily charts with in-week updates as needed, but the weekly charts, beginning with the leading Biotech index continues to be just fine.
A trend is not broken until it is broken. This one is fully intact and last week’s put down or any to come that do not close below the blue arc line are just pullbacks within the trend. One day it will break and bears will say “I told you so”, but in the meantime BTK has been a guide instructing against active bearishness.
Meanwhile, Biotech continues to lead the Nasdaq 100 and more than that, the ratio is in a secular bull market. Now, I don’t want to go all bubble head on you but what is the implication here? To me, given the long-term nature of this chart one implication is that one technology really is standing the test of time vs. the average of so many other technologies, from critically important ones to those silly ones that allow people to take selfies and pictures of their food so they can bore other people with them.
In other words, I buy the Biotech story, long-term. That is different from calling Bio simply an important ‘momentum’ leader in the current late stage US stock bull market, which I believe it also is.
