CPI Sets Up Dull Session With a Bid Underneath

An inline CPI report and good earnings from data center play Nebius (NBIS) was enough to keep a bid under the market during a dull session. Breadth was around 53% positive with the Russell 2000 (IWM) up about 0.6% and the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) adding 0.7%.

I suspect part of the reason for the strength is there are too many folks anticipating a pullback and they are being sucked back in when the market refuses to roll over. The attitude is that if they aren’t going to sell them, we might as well buy them.

Protecting the Gains

I have to admit I’m one of those folks who is becoming more cautious but I’m not at all worried about missing out. My primary mission right now is to keep accounts at their highs and not give much back when we eventually do have a deeper pullback.

If I can keep accounts near highs then I avoid the unproductive work of making up losses and can harness the power of compounding. Avoiding a drawdown is much more important to me right now than adding more gains.

I may be wrong about the ability of the market to trend higher in the near term but I’ll continue to watch for technical setups to develop and will focus on those rather than the indices.

There are plenty of “good” stocks out there but I see few attractive entry points as earnings season comes to an end. Nebius was a great earnings play today but there aren’t many more left. We have PPI on Thursday morning and retail sales on Friday that will attract some attention.

Have a good evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.

At the time of publication, DePorre had no positions in any securities mentioned.