The S&P 500 quietly marched to a flat week at it closed at 4133, four points under last Fridays close. While earnings season continues with most companies meeting expectations, Tesla was an outlier as its gross margins fell below 20% for the first time in nearly three years, leading to an almost 10% drop in their stock price on Thursday. From a technical perspective, the S&P 500 has now seen five straight weeks of higher highs and higher lows. However, Aprils market movement has been subdued with only one daily move of greater than one percent, and we remain less than one percent above Marchs close. As such it appears that we are consolidating more with the Bollinger Band Index (Bollinger Band width/Bollinger Band midpoint) now having a low volatility reading of less than 60%. The last time the BBI was this low was in mid-March, just before we broke above the 4,000 level. As such, were hopeful for repeat and some news that will break us above the YTD high resistance level of 4195. Maybe a step in the right direction will be positive earnings reports from Alphabet, Meta and Amazon and a good GDP number next week. And then the following week we have the Fed meeting with its interest rate decision. For TSP TIPS, both the I and C funds remain bullish as their Price is above their 20 day Moving Average (MA), which is above their 50 MA, which is above their 200 MA. Lastly, with the I fund standing at the top of the Performance Ranking leaderboard, we recommend no changes to our current investment mix.
The S&P 500 quietly marched to a flat week at it closed at 4133, four points under last Fridays close. While earnings season continues with most companies meeting expectations, Tesla was an outlier as its gross margins fell below 20% for the first time in nearly three years, leading to an almost 10% drop in their stock price on Thursday. From a technical perspective, the S&P 500 has now seen five straight weeks of higher highs and higher lows. However, Aprils market movement has been subdued with only one daily move of greater than one percent, and we remain less than one percent above Marchs close. As such it appears that we are consolidating more with the Bollinger Band Index (Bollinger Band width/Bollinger Band midpoint) now having a low volatility reading of less than 60%. The last time the BBI was this low was in mid-March, just before we broke above the 4,000 level. As such, were hopeful for repeat and some news that will break us above the YTD high resistance level of 4195. Maybe a step in the right direction will be positive earnings reports from Alphabet, Meta and Amazon and a good GDP number next week. And then the following week we have the Fed meeting with its interest rate decision. For TSP TIPS, both the I and C funds remain bullish as their Price is above their 20 day Moving Average (MA), which is above their 50 MA, which is above their 200 MA. Lastly, with the I fund standing at the top of the Performance Ranking leaderboard, we recommend no changes to our current investment mix.