Happy hump-day, folks. Well, like it or not, the race the GOP's presidential nomination is pretty much near final. After Trump won Indiana yesterday (in surprisingly convincing fashion), Ted Cruz dropped out. John Kasich was still officially in the race as of the time this was being written, though the buzz was he was going to bow out too rather than try and pick up Cruz's delegates as part of a last-ditch effort to become 'the guy' when Republicans choose their candidate in July. It's still not completely impossible for Cruz or Kasich to secure the nomination out from underneath Donald Trump; the semi-equivalent to a dead heat in a couple of months could release all the delegates from the obligation to cast a ballot for a particular candidate, freeing them up to vote for whoever they wanted to after a first round of voting. It's just kind of hard to imagine the party picking someone who wasn't still campaigning all the way up to the national convention though. You either want it or you don't. But hey - stranger things have happened. As of the latest tally, Donald Trump now has 1047 of the 1237 delegates he needs, with about 500 more GOP delegates still up for grabs. With nobody to contest them, Trump should have little trouble winning the 200 or so he needs. On the Democratic side of the aisle, Hillary has and will likely continue to dominate. As of the latest look Clinton's got 2202 of the 2383 delegates she needs, while Bernie Sanders has 1400. Hillary only needs less than a couple hundred more of the 1163 that are still available. In other words, we're looking for Clinton and Trump to end up squaring off with one another... which should make (if nothing else) an entertaining election. As for what this has to do with you as an investor, it's time for you to start thinking philosophically about what each candidate will likely mean for the economy, and different industries. And like John Monroe over at the Elite Opportunity thinks, this particular election could have far greater consequences for the economy and the market than most elections do. Great, but what's what here? Which candidate is good for which segments of the economy, and which ones are bad for which segments? As much as I'd like to host that discussion with you here in the newsletter, that's a topic a little more philosophical and heavier-duty than we can do justice. I can tell you John absolutely nailed it for EO members today, however, explaining exactly what they need to look for under either would-be president. It was an interesting and worthy departure for John, but time and effort well spent. Like I've said before, I've never seen a more thorough investing newsletter than the Elite Opportunity newsletter. It may well be the only investment publication you'd ever need (and that includes this one). Here's how to tap into the power of John and his team. Or, just cut and paste this link: https://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEO/v1/ Your portfolio will thank you for it. Now, let's talk about today's market action. Shoulda Known You know, it struck me as I was looking at weekly charts of all the major stock indices today... I think too much of the time too many traders try and make things more complicated than they need to be. We ourselves are not immune to this tendency. If you know all too well what I'm talking about, don't beat yourself up. It's the market's job to be difficult to handicap, and the media almost makes a point of making sure you end up second-guessing yourself most of the time. More often than not though, your gut feeling - if you're a trading veteran anyway - is usually the right one. I only make this point because in retrospect as I examined the weekly chart of the S&P 500 (below), this current wave of weakness should have been expected. Three weeks ago we were back to the December peak around 2115, and actually logged a bearish-shaped reversal bar for that week. The VIX was also right at its rock-bottom lows and unable to move any lower. Yet, if you're like me and you're a news junkie constantly on the hunt for all perspectives, it wasn't as if you couldn't find plenty of reasons to be bullish. Once again though, the chart of the market was so much more than a chart. By that I just mean the chart from three weeks ago - and bear in mind we were already seeing a slowdown at the time - was an omen of how all the opinion about the market's foreseeable future was changing for the worse.... right on cue. I'd like to be able to say based on the location and shape of the rollover that's materialized over the past few weeks that once again the S&P 500 is due for a dip back to somewhere between 1867 and 1812, which seems to be the zone of support for our current market paradigm. I can't go quite that far though. Let's just say if we're reading all the clues at face value.... well, you see the chart - it is what it is. It would be unusual if we didn't at least test the floor's developing around 2000 again, where a couple of key moving average lines are about to converge. I'm not just making some sort of assumption based solely on the shape of the current market charts either. There are some underlying dynamics also pointing us in this direction. One of them is Wednesday's leading sectors. Utilities were up. Consumer staples were up. Telecom was up. Those are all defensive sectors traders would want to move into if they foresaw some market and even some economic turbulence. At the other end of the spectrum, energy was down. Industrials were down. Technology stocks were down. And all of those losing sectors were down by more than a little bit too! Those are the areas one would want to avoid if one saw trouble on the horizon. If people are already thinking bearishly enough to drive this sort of clear sector rotation, doesn't it stand to reason that they're already of the mindset to interpret the glass as half empty rather than half full regardless of the true nature of the news and data we're going to be getting over the course of the next few weeks? Here's an updated version of the relative sector performance chart we looked at just a few days ago when we somewhat thought we were seeing some rotation out of low-risk areas and back into high-risk areas. Guess not. Staples, telecom, and utilities are all perking up again, while everything else continues to deteriorate. Since we're updating charts we look at on a regular basis, here's a fresh look at the NYSE's advancer trend vs. its decliner trend, and its up-volume trend vs. down-volume trend. We've now seen enough bearish breadth and depth to drive bearish crossovers for each trend line (and our apologies if you're colorblind). Though not with perfection, when the decliner trend and the bearish volume trend line both move above the trend lines representing the advancer trend and the bullish volume trend, respectively, the outcome does indeed tend to be bearish. I've marked some of those points with arrows; up is bullish, down is bearish. If you look closely though, you'll also see these trend lines each made a turn right at a market's turning point, even before we saw actual crosses of these lines. The trick is just knowing to what extent you trust all these clues. The fact is, sometimes they're wrong. Like I said above, if you'd like to take all of this information to the next proverbial level, the Elite Opportunity service does this - and more - every day. If you're not a subscriber to the EO, you're missing out. Again, here's how to get it.