This week I'm not going to dwell too much on what happened and why (as if I know), as by now I would be amazed if you didn't already know the adventures of oil, Russia, and the Fed, or haven't heard at least a dozen different takes on it. Rather, I will concentrate on where it leaves us now in terms of price.

I try to do this more and more in my own work, as although I do enjoy watching the tape and joining in the banter (something instilled in me from years of working as a client and later as a broker), there are times when my internal noise to signal ratio tells me I need to put the earplugs in and come back after the close to check the score.

Many years from now an aspiring young trader will develop a trading system and backtest it to see how their strategy holds up across various timeframes and market types. When their system comes to this past week, it won't have the benefit (or handicap depending on your point of view) of knowing what we know. It won't have TV pundits to explain that day's most popular narrative to help it interpret the action. It will only have price as an input to determine its actions. And it will be the purest most unbiased interpretation than anything you've heard this week.

I can't hope to come close to that here, but I also won't pretend I can tell you what Russia or the Fed will do. As much as possible I try to look at the price action like a backtest would and trade based on what it tells me.

There were a couple of things that stood out to me this week. Wednesday's rally was clearly led by energy which made a lot of people skeptical of the market move, but I was pleasantly surprised how many of my safer defensive names held their own that day, and Thursday's rally was much broader in nature, across the board strong moves, instantly quashing any thoughts that Wednesday's rally was a dead-cat bounce.

By Friday, the S&P had posted its biggest weekly gain in nearly two years. The list of new highs which had slowed to a trickle midweek is now awash with names. I've gone through well over 100 charts at 52-week highs today, all of them S&P 500 names, and across a wide range of sectors. As always, anything can happen, but although the index itself didn't quite make it to a new high (it's just 0.23% away on a closing basis), this looks like one of the strongest moves we've seen this year, and there is a whole host of stocks with actionable signals right now.

I will leave you with just a sample:-

$HON

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$AEE

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$BIIB

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$ACN

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$GLW

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$MKC

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$PKG

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$CHRW

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$CBG

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$CTAS

Full analysis and commentary on current signals as well as entry/exit posts, additional trade ideas, and a comprehensive watchlist is now available here.

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