August has been a rollercoaster for investors, as trade tensions and fears of a recession injected uncertainty into global markets.

After much back and forth between the U.S. and China, the two nations expressed optimism and a willingness to come to a trade deal on Thursday.Yet on Sunday, the U.S. is still scheduled to slap 15% tariffs on select Chinese goods in another escalation of the more than year-long trade war.

Even as President Donald Trump said he would delay key consumer items from the list being affected this weekend, some apparel and household goods will still be impacted.

So far this month, the S&P 500 and Dow tumbled nearly 2%, while the Nasdaq sank by around 2%. Meanwhile, investors continued to flock toward safe haven assets such as gold. The precious metal jumped 8% in August.

High volatility contributed to the high quality of the day trading alerts this month.

US stocks closed July higher, with large-caps up 1.44 percent and small-caps up 1.14 percent (S&P 500 and 600 indices). They would have closed considerably higher if the month had ended on the 30^th. But the 31^st saw large-caps decline by 1.09 percent, the only burst of market volatility in July.  International stocks didn’t fare so well.  Developed-market stocks were down by 1.27 percent and emerging-market stocks by 1.22 percent (MSCI EAFE and Emerging Markets indices).  The stronger dollar accounted for these falls from a US investor’s perspective: when the dollar is stronger, the value of foreign assets measured in dollars falls. Bonds rose modestly with the Bloomberg Barclays Global Index up 0.22 percent.

Closing a remarkably strong first half of 2019, June was a positive month for stocks at home and abroad as well as for bonds. US mid-cap stocks saw the highest returns for the month, up 7.64 percent, with large- and small-cap stocks also up over 7 percent (S&P 400, 500 and 600 indices respectively). Emerging-market stocks were up by 6.24 percent and developed-market stocks by 5.93 percent (MSCI Emerging Market and EAFE indices). Bonds were up as well, with the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate Index rising 1.26 percent. US stock markets were fairly calm, with the S&P 500 up or down over 1 percent on only two days.

Few years ago, I’ve started collecting stock market data, researching the price patterns, and testing trading strategies. I went through multiple free and paid courses, read a number of books, and, of course, I’ve used the accumulated knowledge for stock trading. Since my educational and professional background is software engineering, I’ve decided to create software that will recognize favorable market situations and generate trading signals. I went through a long process of testing, learning, and refining my algorithms, I finally found the approach that worked. After several months of using these signals for my own trading, I’ve decided to open it to the public. This is how the stocksbuyalerts.com project was born. In this article, I’d like to share why I decided to take the Digital Marketing Nanodegree Program.

Here is the 2019 YTD performance of the major market indices (as of the close on 1/31/19):

• S&P 500 (SPX) +7.9%
• Nasdaq Composite (COMPX) +9.7%
• Dow Industrials (DJI) +7.2%
• Russell 2000 (RUT) +11.2%

Can the market correction can “officially” be declared over? It doesn’t really matter, because our alerts can help you stay profitable even if the market goes down.

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