Idling

From a short-term standpoint, the good
news is that the Nasdaq has shown three accumulation days in the last eight.

More good news: Last week’s strength
allowed some issues to stake a claim to the right side of their bases.

The bad news: The leaders of the last
cycle, nearly all techs, aren’t showing the proper basing structures.

As one example, Juniper
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is
showing increasing volatility, printing two higher highs and two lower lows
recently.

Brocade
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is another whose
base appears too wide and loose for comfort.

Broadcom
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is another.

This is not the type of systematic,
beneath-the-surface accumulation you want to see in the leaders.

And so it may be that tech is not the
leading sector in the next advance.

Which is why it pays to keep your
mindset open to other sectors, the most obvious being healthcare.

“Obvious” because its growth
rate is greater than any other broad sector besides tech.

In ’91, healthcare and retail were the
early leaders.

Ignoring these segments would have
cost you, the intermediate-term trader.

But leadership often is exactly like
that, changing color and name from one cycle to the next.

In fact seeing new names splice the
tape is very healthy, normal, and to be desired at the outset of any
intermediate rise with legs.

Meanwhile, there are a few enterprise
softwares dotting the tape, Aremissoft
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being one…the stock showed
good tone last week before pausing Friday on a bullish drying of
turnover…Monday it shot to the top of its eight-month base on robust trade.

A plus was JNI
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, following
through on thick volume after last week’s breakout of a multimonth base.

We will need to see more JNI’s and
fewer Chicos Fas’s
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before getting too cozy with this market.

The latter broke out of a 10-week
sideways base on strong trade Friday, only to stall near the lip on Monday.

Otherwise, except for a sector here
and a sector there, most notably healthcare, the election won’t have a big
impact on the market.