This week’s report is a day late, because I spent Thursday at the Utah Dental Convention in Salt Lake City. The one impression I came away with is how few people are actively working to secure their retirement. Dentistry is among the most lucrative professions in the United States yet many practitioners don’t have any retirement plan. That is a little scary.

As Federal Reserve Chairman Bob Bernanke recently pointed out to Congress, the current Social Security system will fail in about 20 years without a major overhaul. That is most likely going to mean a reduction in benefits. So Americans who are currently ignoring the prospect of their future retirement are going to be facing some tough decisions down the road.

There really isn’t a lot of new market information to present. Major market indices are advancing, but at a slight slope. All of the year’s gains to this point could be negated with a day or two of downward market movement.

The chart above shows how major indices have performed over the past three months. The black line is the Nasdaq, blue is the S&P 500 and gold is the Dow. For the period encompassed by this chart, all three remain in slight uptrends and all have gained about 4% over that period.

A couple of minor recent changes could signal that a stronger advance is on the way. In the past few sessions the Nasdaq has regained leadership over the other two indices. Historically, the biggest market gains are made with the Nasdaq in control. Also, as the bottom portion of the chart shows, the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) for the Nasdq turned positive a few days ago.

Obviously this is a very preliminary picture that could change quickly. Technical indicators are not predictive. But they at lease allow us to assess current market conditions. The most important indicator of all is trend, and right now major indices all continue to trend up.

F.S.