No surprise, investor bullishness is also near the highs:

At the same time the seasonal pattern is usually less than positive:

While overall the powerful economic expansion, which began in mid 2009, may soon begin to show its age:

Hat tip Charlie Bilello/Ryan Detrick

The steady rise in home prices has consistently out paced income and inflation growth over the last few years.  Something’s gotta give. 

Hat tip Charlie Bilello

The big movers today, following blow out earnings reports: 

Caterpillar  +5.9%

McDonalds  +4.75%

Wal-Mart  +2.1%

JP Morgan  +1.7%

Not a negative.  Hat tip Charlie Billello

Long term the trend in Crude remains down.  However – this Daily Chart (each candle is a day) depicts a potential intermediate move higher.  Want to see 45 hold on a closing basis.

Click for larger view

If you had invested $10,000 in Netflix on its IPO you would have $1,500,000.00 now.  But it wasn’t easy getting there.  You would have had to live through two separate draw downs of over 80%.  Which would have meant you had absolutely zero risk management in place.  Not a good long term strategy.

Hat tip John Boorman

Neither can I.  Great chart above, a very long term view of the S&P 500’s total returns.  I vividly remember being on the floor during the 1987 crash, standing just outside the S&P 500 futures pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. If felt like stocks were going to zero. That monstrous October 19th flush(-22.6%)is barely a blip.

The details:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)

On Friday the Nasdaq Composite closed with a slight loss ending an impressive winning streak at 10 straight gains.

What happens next?  Well, usually the tech heavy index continues higher.  Key bit:

On Thursday (July 20) the Nasdaq closed in the green for the tenth day in a row. This is significant, as history would suggest near-term strength could continue. In fact, since 1980, the Nasdaq has gained 2.6% on average during the month following a 10-day win streak versus an average monthly return of 1.0%. Looking at this same period, three months later things became more normal. Over the next several weeks though, the bulls could still be in charge.

And, if you think the technology sector has become extremely overextended during the current nine year bull cycle, no need to worry based on inflation adjusted data:

Hat tip LPL Research/Ryan Detrick