The good news is:
In the past 2 weeks, the market has recovered over half of its losses from earlier in the month.

The Negatives

New lows have declined from their extreme levels earlier in the month, but, remain higher than you would expect to see coming off a bottom.

New highs have not increased significantly indicating the rally has very narrow leadership.

The first chart covers the past 6 months showing the Nasdaq composite (OTC) in blue and a 10% trend (19 day EMA) of Nasdaq new highs (OTC NH) in green.  Dashed vertical lines have been drawn on the 1st trading day of each month. 

OTC NH continued falling as prices were recovering.

The next chart is similar to the one above one except it shows the S&P 500 (SPX) in red and NY NH, in green, has been calculated with NYSE data.

NY NH also continued to decline. 

The Positives

Prices have continued to rise; however, breadth has not been reassuring.

The next chart covers the past 6 months showing the OTC in blue and a 40% trend (4 day EMA) of Nasdaq new highs divided by new highs + new lows (OTC HL Ratio), in red.  Dashed horizontal lines have been drawn at 10% levels for the indicator; the line is solid at the 50%, neutral, level. 

OTC HL Ratio managed to remain positive finishing the week at 58%.

The next chart is similar to the one above one except it shows the SPX in red and NY HL Ratio, in blue, has been calculated with NYSE data.

NY HL Ratio finishes the week at a neutral 50%. 

Seasonality
Next week includes the last 3 trading days of February and the first 2 trading days of March during the 2nd year of the Presidential Cycle.  The tables below show the daily change, on a percentage basis for that period.

OTC data covers the period from 1963 to 2016 while SPX data runs from 1928 to 2016.  There are summaries for both the 2nd year of the Presidential Cycle and all years combined.

Average returns for the coming week have been positive by all measures and stronger during the 2nd year of the Presidential Cycle than other years.

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