The Markets are likely to be trying to test the highs of 2010. This will be the second test. Only time will tell if it goes higher from there.

Dow Industrials reached its destination area, corrected to around 10,000 and appears to be going back up.

Dow Transports has corrected and is working its way to its previous high.

Economic Evolution is a continuing stream of new product and service improvements and occasional major impact innovations added to the already existing products and services causing changes to the world and local economy, accepted economic and social assumptions and world and local community political relationships between government, people and business.

Dividends came up this month in February 1, 2010 issue of BARRON’S. Their point was large U.S. companies like Cisco Systems, Google and Apple were doing their shareholders a disservice. They were holding large cash amounts for possible acquisitions which can often be a sign that the core business is slowing. There are often acquisitions that are done for management’s egos and end up losing money.

The Markets are likely to test their tops.

Dow Industrials may have reached its destination area; is currently correcting before probably testing its high area again.

Dow Transports are like the Industrials; they may have corrected and are starting up to test the highs.

S&P 500: Same as the Industrials.

NASADAQ: Same as the other indexes.

Your Own Personal Technical Research Department

If you don’t know where to start looking for investment advice, we suggest you check out two websites: Stockcharts.com and Yahoo Finance. Stockcharts.com lets you see if your investments are going up, down or sideways. Looking at charts to attempt to predict future price direction is called technical analysis. Yahoo gives you the numbers you can use to check the “fundamentals” of your investment and will be presented in another section.

Stockcharts.com

Investing Steps for Selecting Your Retirement Plan Investment Options
The first step is to make a commitment to set aside some time each week or possibly month to review the market and your investments. We would suggest 15 minutes or so each weekend. To preserve and grow your assets, you need to watch them like you would a garden. Neglect of either can create big disappointments.

You need to review your retirement plan options to see which ones you’re going to follow. You should select at least two or three:

The market continues to rally. Many indices are at or above their highs for the year. The NASDAQ and the Russell 2000 are positive as is the old Wilshire 5000. Big caps and value are the losers for now. Growth is what is taking the markets up. This is also the area where speculation and short covering rallies are common. Government intervention into the economy is distorting or postponing problems. It remains a nice trading rally in a long term down trend.

The Momentum Indicator (for both the NYSE and NASDAQ):

The charts are in a buying zone around 75 and a selling zone around 120. 100 is the neutral zone. The NYSE went to 170 last month. It was 141 last week. The NASDAQ has been above 100 for the last 5 weeks. This is a healthy sign for an uptrend but may need a breather for awhile.

Weekly 52 Week Highs and Lows:

This turned positive both for the day and week. The path
of least resistance is up for now.

Intermediate Term C indicator:

This stayed positive. This is a sign of a rising bias for

An old definition of investing was getting INCOME, a return on investment, with little risk. Today, that definition is gone because speculation is popular. Income is supposedly bad, capital gains are good. The reality is annual total returns since 1820 have had around 35% to 40% of the total return from dividends.