Thursday, March 6, 2008

A Closer Look at th Health Care Sector

At the beginning of the week, I stated that I was going to look a bit deeper into the market and analyze the charts of the major sectors. Today I'm going to continue by looking at the health care sector.



There are two obvious trends lines with this chart. The first connects a large number of bottoms over the last 5 years, while the second (the lower one) connects the more extreme price fluctuations. While prices have broken through the first trend line, they are resting a bit above the second (see the chart below).



One the yearly chart, there is a pretty clear triangle consolidation which would serve as a reversal formation.



With the SMA chart, notice the following:

-- Prices are below the 200 day SMA, indicating a bear market.

-- The longer SMAs -- the 200 and 50 day SMA -- are moving lower.

-- The shorter SMAs and prices are bunched up together and have been for about a month, indicating a lack of meaningful direction in the market.

-- Price movements have been non-existent for the last month or so.