Although the large caps set new highs early on Friday, small caps and NASDAQ have not come close to their prior highs. Friday closed with extreme weakness across the board, and it was on high volume. The technical picture and our fundamentals-based sector rankings have both taken a bearish turn, so we might see more weakness ahead.

As Q1 of 2014 comes to an end, we can see that January was extremely weak, February gained it all back, and March treaded water. At this point, as we head into what has been the strongest month of the year over the past 20 years, signals are mixed, with a steadily recovering economy and bullish fundamental indicators mixed with neutral technical and some bearish sentiment indicators.

The market continues to creep upward, with the short-term trend clearly positive albeit on quite low volume.  The S&P 500 remains above its 50-day and 200-day moving average, but as we head into the current week, our concern is about conviction within the marketplace.  The ECRI (Economic Cycle Research Institute) finally gave a positive uptick last week, but it would be early to conclude that we’re on a strong uptrend.