Summary

The major stock indices closed higher on Wednesday for only the fourth time in the past 15 days. We are ignoring February 26 as the index gains were meaningless. Some of the indices have bounced only to their sharply falling five-day exponential average and stalled. It was the second risk-on day in a row, with gains in Information Technology, Energy, Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services, and Financial. Defensive Consumer Staples was whacked over 2%. The largest gainers on the S&P 500 (SPX) and the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) were again the recently beaten-up IT issues as well as Utility stocks that benefit from the AI and data center buildouts. We talked about improvement in some of the breadth stats yesterday and will add a few more today. The number of NYSE new 52-week lows peaked at 218 on March 4 and dropped to 94 as of March 11. At the same time, the NYSE is at a lower level. The percentage of new lows (of total issues) peaked at 8% back in December and is now at 5%. We get worried when the percentage of lows rises above 10%. NYSE advancing volume bottomed on March 3, although declining volume hit a new high on March 10. We remain worried as only 40% of SPX sto