Last Monday we published a Think B.I.G. post noting that the S&P 500’s 50-day average daily change had ticked up to +/-0.92%.  Given that every day so far in April has seen a 1%+ move and that nine of the last ten trading days have seen 1%+ moves, it’s no surprise that the reading has ticked up over 1% at this point.  Over the last 50 trading days, the S&P 500’s average daily change has been +/-1.04%.  Remember that just a few months ago, this reading had ticked all the way down to +/-0.22%, and a 1% move was pretty much unheard of.  Now it’s very uncommon for the S&P not to close up or down at least 1%.

At some point, all of this daily volatility will settle down again, but until it does, traders that for years were painfully dealing with low vol can now rejoice.

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The weekly AAII bullish and bearish readings are meant to track individual investor sentiment towards the stock market.  While bullish sentiment remained low for nearly all of 2017 (as the S&P 500 went up and up and up), it spiked up to the high 50s just as the market was peaking in January.  The first 10%+ correction for the S&P 500 since early 2016 ensued, and like clockwork, the AAII bullish reading collapsed back down to the high 20s/low 30s.

AAII surveys individual investors on a weekly basis, and this week the bullish sentiment reading took a very small dip to 31.9%.  At the same time, the AAII bearish sentiment ticked up very slightly to 36.64%.  Given that sentiment readings are generally viewed as contrarian, it’s bullish to see more bears than bulls.

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Our Trend Analyzer is helpful for tracking directional trend shifts for equity markets around the world.  Recently, global markets have been moving pretty much in unison with each other.  Below is a snapshot of regional ETFs from our Trend Analyzer tool.  As shown, a week ago nearly every one of them was oversold, but as of this morning, they have all moved slightly out of oversold territory and back into the neutral zone.  Note that none are back above their 50-day moving averages at this point.  Until that happens, bears have control.

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After posting a sub-220k reading last week, economists were projecting that initial jobless claims would come in at 225k this week.  When the actual number was released at 8:30 AM ET today (as it is every Thursday at this time), it was a bit surprising to see a spike up to 242k — 17k higher than expected.

Below is a chart of seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims going back to 2005.  As shown, the long-term downtrend for claims remains intact, but this week’s spike took the reading up to the top of the downtrend channel.  Given the unprecedented strength in claims over the last couple of years, any consecutive readings above 250k would be a cause for concern in our view.

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The uptick to 242k this week took the 4-week moving average for claims up to 228,250, an increase of 5k from last week.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, initial jobless claims came in at 200.9k.  As shown below, 200.9k is the lowest print for this specific week since at least 2005, and it’s more than 100k below the average of 314k for this specific week since 2000.