As of this morning, 88% of S&P 500 companies are trading above their 50-day moving averages. This is a very high reading, but it's not quite as high as the reading we saw back in January.

(click to enlarge)Looking at the ten major sectors, the Consumer Discretionary

Monday’s scheduled report on US retail sales for April is projected to remain unchanged vs. the previous month, according to The Capital Spectator's average econometric forecast. That compares with a 0.4% decline reported by the Census Bureau for March. Meanwhile, the Capital Spectator's average projection for April is slightly above a consensus forecast based on a recent survey of economists.

Here's a closer look at the numbers, followed by brief definitions of the methodologies behind The Capital Spectator's projections:

R-2: A linear regression model that analyzes two data series in context with retail sales: an index of weekly hours worked for production/nonsupervisory employees in private industries and the stock market (S&P 500). The historical relationship between the variables is applied to the more recently updated data to project retail sales. The computations