Weekly Watchlist Jan 19
Mid-Term Year Chop Continues
Welcome back to another Weekly Trade Plan with The Dividend Journal! If this is your first time here, great timing. This newsletter is your one stop briefing to stay ahead of the market and step into the week fully prepared.
I hope everyone is enjoying their extended weekend :)
🎯 Initial Thoughts + TLDR
The US indexes traded in a pretty range bound zone last week, with intraday rallies getting sold off. Small caps continue to outperform, with the Russell 2000 hitting new highs and a continuation of a year long consolidation period!
This choppy range has shown that breadth is continuing to improve, with real estate, consumer staples and industrials showing lots of strength. Names like CAT 0.00%↑, HD 0.00%↑, and WMT 0.00%↑ reached new highs.
Several banks reported earnings this past week, producing mixed results. JPM 0.00%↑ missed with cautious guidance while GS 0.00%↑’s earnings was met with more enthusiasm from the market.
This past week saw new highs made on both Gold and Silver, which acted as safe havens especially since Powell released a statement addressing the investigation into him for renovation costs.
Mid-Term Expectations:
The midterm year has always been known to be choppy, and this year has started out unsurprising. History has shown that the market is relatively choppy for the majority of the year, with most positive gains made in the last quarter of the year.
Of course, this data should be considered in calculations as a grain of salt seeing how 2025 saw many anomalies in terms of seasonality.
📅 Key Earnings & Economic Calendar
Monday, January 19: Markets Closed for MLK Holiday
Wednesday, January 21: President Trump Speaking at World Economic Forum, Home Sales & Construction Spending
Thursday, January 22: Core PCE & GDP
Friday, January 23: Flash Manufacturing & Services PMI, Revised UoM Consumer Sentiment
Earnings this week, courtesy of Earnings Whispers:
📈 Market Update: As of Friday, Jan 16
SPY 0.00%↑: The market continues to be pretty range bound with an inside week being printed. I think this trend will continue for the coming weeks, meaning stock selection and positioning are crucial. Despite the overall market not really moving, there will be themes that become outliers.
QQQ 0.00%↑: The better metric for determining direction is probably going to be from tech. The theme is still lagging behind compared to the S&P500 and any indications of catch up should see great moves occur in large cap tech. Until then, the focus should still be on small to mid cap names. Any news data will be huge catalysts during this period of chop.
Bitcoin: It’s so amazing to be able to pinpoint sentiment changes in real time. For the past couple weeks, we’ve been observing the price action on Bitcoin and identified the key metric for a change in character. As the EMAs begin to flip back bullish, we are also getting other confirmations.
Multiple daily closes over the 94K resistance spot
No aggressive pullbacks back into the consolidation zone
No hyper extension, EMAs catch up and are being used as support
🔍 What I’m Watching
