Market Alert

S & P 500 (1220)

I follow over 200 senior U.S. and Canadian stocks in addition to indexes, currencies and commodities. Market Alerts are reserved for moments when most of them fall into line to signal important market change points, and such is the case as I write today.

What I'm seeing is a tendency for the formation of short term tops almost across the board. If I was a trader it would be a strong inducement to step aside for the time being. I'm prepared to accept the possibility of being a few weeks early here, because short term tops sometimes take several weeks to run themselves to completion.

Stocks in strong longer term uptrends fare better than others during short term corrective phases, but on this occasion when so many groups have aligned at tops, even the best could feel some pain.

Two hundred senior stocks might not provide a representative sample, but top formations clearly show up in oil and gas stocks, metals (including gold), e-commerce, retail, consumer products, pharma, insurance, hi-tech, auto manufacturers, defence, brokers and more.

I get mixed messages from the senior bank stocks, and with my limited sampling, I could not find tops among the strong healthcare or biopharma stocks. These were the only exceptions, and with such an impressive top formation alignment everywhere else, I am erring on the side of caution across the board.