The Dow Jones index rallies on fumes

Since the start of the year, the Dow has lagged behind other markets. Has the bull market run out of puff? John C Burford examines the charts.

I have neglected the Dow lately because there were more pressing markets to cover. But today, I thought I would analyse the Dow since it is now giving me some important trading signals.

On 18 December, when I last wrote on the Dow, the market was expecting the Fed to announce their intentions regarding a possible tapering of their quantitative easing (QE) programme. And sure enough, they did say they would scale back their bond purchases by $10bn a month until the end of 2014, when the buying will cease altogether.

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John is is a British-born lapsed PhD physicist, who previously worked for Nasa on the Mars exploration team. He is a former commodity trading advisor with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and worked in a boutique futures house in California in the 1980s.

 

He was a partner in one of the first futures newsletter advisory services, based in Washington DC, specialising in pork bellies and currencies. John is primarily a chart-reading trader, having cut his trading teeth in the days before PCs.

 

As well as his work in the financial world, he has launched, run and sold several 'real' businesses producing 'real' products.