[pcabc]

The NYSE advance decline line was only showing some small divergences via the different Momentum indexes and the McClellan Oscillator and summation index. But the other Nasdaq AD Line and the NYSE AD Volume both had divergences and weren't making new highs with the price action.

I've had a fair bit on so I only realized that my advance / decline data supply had, regrettably, been lost, not ideal timing.  My new approach is not showing these differences, but I don't have those exact sources at present.

With the Percentage of Stocks above the 50, 150 and 200 day MAs, they all gave bear alert signals in the middle of January (see investorsintelligence.com - Definitions of current Market Breadth Status) when they moved strongly back below 70% while the stocks were making new highs still. You are right though that the 150 day and 200 day only gave full bear confirmed signals on the breakdown this week. But the short term 50 day MA gave a Bear Confirmed signal on the 27th January.

So this and other changes is why I had been highlighting in my videos for the last month that we needed to protect our account and have a more defensive strategy. As the market was very extended after 5 months of running strongly higher, and the breadth was showing some weakness appearing, which is why I had downgraded the Weight of Evidence to Neutral + status before this weeks fall. Which means taking a more defensive strategy in my playbook. But that is obviously more difficult for an investor than a trader.

I've been fairly busy with other stuff.  I have been monitoring my breadth, perhaps not closely enough and I'm changing to an investor mindset for my SIPP and ISA.  Since the MAs were rising still, both for price and also various breadth curves, notably not for % stocks above their MAs though, I had been tuning this out to a fair extent as short term noise, especially as I have tried to pick finds / stocks which historically come good.  Which is all well and good, but this drop has been far more brutal than I think everyone was assuming.

I'm seeing how my breadth scoring system goes.  It was last green (buy) mid Jan with short term sell (yellow) late Jan) and long term position sell (red) late Jan strengthening back to short term sell.  I over optimitisticaly opened a few positions seeing the improvment in breadth, breaking my earlier thoughts on what I should do.  Red, long term position sell, showed again the day before the gap down.  I should take my own breadth summary more seriously.  But has I not swapped my mindset I likely would had at least lightened up.  In my demo spread bet account I would have closed positions whilst they were close to the top if I paid heed to the yellow short term sell indication.