BigTrends

This from my friend Fred Goodman at http://www.marketmonograph.com/

"The charts of most indexes are pretty much the same, as they move up and down within the narrow trading range that has confined the market for three weeks. The QQQQ flag is an almost perfectly flat rectangle with two highs at 44.65 and 44.73 and two lows at 42.88 and 42.90. It covers a total of 4.3% from top to bottom.

Thomas Bulkowski in his Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns pointed out that most rectangles end up breaking out in the direction of the trend that was in effect before it formed. This conforms to the findings of Edwards and Magee, who found that roughly 2/3 of flags, pennants and rectangles were continuation patterns rather than reversals.

Bulkowski discovered that the rally following a positive breakout generally continued in that direction and produced a minimum gain equal to the height of the rectangle, or in this case 4.3%. He also found that if the final passage through the rectangle reversed before reaching the trendline, the breakout was almost always in the new direction. So if QQQQ moves up today and reaches its upper trendline, it is likely that an upside breakout will follow.

These are interesting findings, but we must keep in mind that they are average findings -- nothing is ever etched in stone in the stock market.

Click read more  for charts and more information

QQQQ -- Daily Chart from BigCharts.com Through Wednesday, December 9th

Once again, here is a comparison of the present recovery to the one following the December 1974 bottom. There was an inverse head & shoulders pattern made in both cases, and while we only made it to within 15% of the 1190.27 projection in 1975, we have already been within 6% of the 11141.83 projection this time around.

The correlation between the recoveries from the 1974 and 2009 bottoms is 82% through yesterday's close, and 82% is a pretty strong correlation. However, take a look at the correlation between 2009 and the 1982 bottom in the next chart.

Dow Industrials vs. 1975 Through Tuesday, November 24th

The correlation between these two sequences is an amazing 96%, and we're looking at a 9-month period! It certainly makes one anticipate a continuation of the current horizontal trend, just as it worked out in the summer of 1983"