As of Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at the close of trading EquitySurge™ has continued a strong sell signal for USA equities.

The stock market has retraced higher after the sell-off last week. The retrace has taken the S&P500 Index back to a critical resistance level around 2470.

Here are a couple of charts to consider:

Corporate stock buybacks have been a major tailwind for higher stock prices since the 2009 lows. After peaking in late 2010 buybacks have been declining ever since and have now gone negative at an annual rate of 20 percent per year.

General Electric (symbol: GE) has been an excellent bellwether for the economy. It’s stock price decline has also been an early canary of looming recessions. Chart courtesy of Raoul Pal of The Global Macro Investor.

Here are updates to the charts we watch carefully. All of these charts use the Elder Impulse System to color Heikin-Ashi candles. Green signifies an uptrend, red a downtrend and blue retrace/pause/consolidation. The larger the candle, the stronger the impulse trend.

Ratio chart of Sotheby’s (Symbol: BID) and the S&P500 Index via SPY:

High Yield via HYG:

Long US Treasury Bonds via TLT:

Mid Caps via MIDU

Small Caps via IWM:

If you would like to review the EquitySurge™ trading signals generated in 2016 and so far in 2017 please see the Trading Signal Performance Chart page.