1. Several markets are at interesting junctures, about to fail at trend-line resistance or break out.
2. Other markets that were overbought above 50-day moving averages like the U.S. market, have pulled back to retest the support at those moving averages, the question being which way now.
3. Investor nervousness regarding the short-term overbought condition of the U.S. market above 50-day moving averages can be seen in last night's weekly AAII sentiment poll, in which bullishness fell 5.3 to 42.8% and bearishness jumped 5.3 to 29.6%.
4. New weekly unemployment claims fell by 5,000 last week to 366,000. The more important four-week moving average, which smooths out the weekly volatility, fell by 2,250 to 350,500, a nearly five-year low.
4. In Europe, Germany's industrial production rose 0.3% in December, besting the consensus forecast for 0.2%. And in the U.K. British industrial production was up 1.1% in December, also better than the consensus forecast of 0.9%.
5. Insiders are selling heavily again. The Vickers Weekly Insider Report is showing the sell-to-buy ratio on NYSE-listed stocks was at 9.2 to 1 last week. As Mark Hulbert reports on MarketWatch this morning, insiders have been selling heavily for several weeks but the market has continued to rise. Insiders are frequently early. Mark notes the sell-to-buy ratio was at 8.38 to 1 in mid-December, and says there were four occasions in the last ten years when the ratio got this high and the market continued higher for another month or two.