This is your TSP Watchdog UPDATE for the week ended February 8, 2019.

It was a slow week – on Wall Street and in the news.  Stock prices were flat – though they eked out small gains to keep a 7 week winning streak alive.  The S&P 500 gained 0.05%; the Dow gained 0.17%; the NASDAQ gained 0.47%.

The biggest news item was the State of the Union address (exhibit A that it was a slow news week).  How you feel about the event probably depends on which side of the aisle you sit on and whether you like to wear white in February.

Corporate earnings for Q4 are in, and the numbers were good enough – not great, but good enough that prices have held up.

Oil was down on the week.  Meetings with China, to continue trade discussions, have been postponed (this rattled the market a bit).

We should begin to get economic reports from government offices that were closed when the reports would normally have been released.  That will give the markets more to chew on.

Fed Chairman Powell had dinner at the White House on Monday.  This might have been a good night to be a fly on the wall…

The slow week on Wall Street played out in our TSP Watchdog database.  There were no trend changes – despite the fact that we are sitting right on trend lines for both the C fund and the S fund.  But neither fund moved enough to generate a trend change.

With seven weeks in a row of gains (albeit very small gains the past few weeks), at some point it is likely we will have a DOWN week.

So, we remain in “cash” (G fund) waiting for positive trends.  The market has had multiple opportunities to generate positive trends but is yet to follow through.

Stay tuned.  We will keep you posted if/when we actually get some trend changes.

Reply to this email with any questions.

Scot B.