Stock Market Outlook for October 17, 2025
Banks collapsing, credit spreads widening, and bears emerging…oh my!
*** Stocks highlighted are for information purposes only and should not be considered as advice to purchase or to sell mentioned securities. As always, the use of technical and fundamental analysis is encouraged in order to fine tune entry and exit points to average seasonal trends.
Stocks Entering Period of Seasonal Strength Today:
Subscribers Click on the relevant link to view the full profile. Not a subscriber? Signup here.
Zedge, Inc. (AMEX:ZDGE) Seasonal Chart
PNC Financial Services Gr (NYSE:PNC) Seasonal Chart
Onto Innovation Inc (NYSE:ONTO) Seasonal Chart
Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASD:ARWR) Seasonal Chart
BMO Equal Weight U.S. Banks Hedged to CAD Index ETF (TSE:ZUB.TO) Seasonal Chart
The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG) Seasonal Chart
Stantec, Inc. (TSE:STN.TO) Seasonal Chart
Note to Subscribers:
Over the past three days, we have received bounce-backs of our reports from members that use Microsoft emails (eg. Hotmail.com, Outlook.com, Live.com, MSN.com). This is likely related to the fact that the simple mention of the term “Bank” has triggered spam filters among these domains that are unable to decipher between legitimate and fraudulent distributions. Given that we are within bank earnings season, navigating around this term is difficult. If you failed to receive our Market Outlook reports from the past few days, please access these distributions via the archive at https://charts.equityclock.com
We apologize for the disruption that this has caused.
The Markets
Struggle in the Financial sector weighed on the broader market on Thursday. The large-cap benchmark ended down by just over six-tenths of one percent, showing another rejection from what is becoming resistance at the 20-day moving average (~6674). The variable hurdle had kept the short-term trend off of the April lows intact. The 50-day moving average (6557) is presently attempting to mitigate a more serious downfall through the weeks ahead, but the more that the benchmark resists at the short-term variable hurdle, the more vulnerable the longer-term threshold becomes. The volatility index continues to move higher from a bottoming pattern, aligned with seasonal norms and suggesting that the market may not be in the clear toward broad risk exposure, yet. October is the month when fear/volatility hit a peak and, in an instant, the month is showing this unsettled state. Despite the transition out of the weakest two-week stretch of the year for stocks at the end of September, the strategy has remained the same, which is to avoid being aggressive in risk (stocks) for now (over the next couple of weeks), but take advantage of the volatility shock to increase the risk profile of portfolios ahead of the best six months of the year for stocks that gets underway at the end of October. We have picked our spots in the market to which we want to be exposed, both through and beyond the period of seasonal volatility, in our list of candidates in the market that are worthy to Accumulate or Avoid and this will be an ideal starting point to build up allocations for the best six month of the year timeframe. We will continue to allow for the possibility of volatility to ramp up through the days/weeks ahead and position the risk metrics of portfolios appropriately until a more ideal setup to reach out on the risk spectrum (eg. away from bonds/gold and towards our four desired sectors to be exposed) is revealed. The Seasonal Advantage Portfolio that we oversee at Castlemoore continues to be well positioned, outperforming the market.
Today, in our Market Outlook to subscribers, we discuss the following:
- Breakout of the VIX pressuring aggressive short bets on the so-called “fear gauge”
- Banks under threat as high yield spreads show signs of shifting trend
- Mixed manufacturer sentiment for October
Subscribers can look for this report in their inbox or by clicking on the following link and logging in: Market Outlook for October 17
Not signed up yet? Subscribe now to receive full access to all of the research and analysis that we publish
Sentiment on Thursday, as gauged by the put-call ratio, ended close to neutral at 0.90.
Seasonal charts of companies reporting earnings today:
S&P 500 Index
TSE Composite
| Sponsored By... |
|
