Revisiting December’s lows

Index & Sector performance 1/6/15

The Market:

Oil appears to still be affecting the broad market and causing caution in investors as crude, which lost the psychological $50 level yesterday, traded down over $2 in today’s session.

Yesterday we remarked that a gap down in the morning could be a short term trading opportunity to the long side but unfortunately we opened flat to slightly up, negative the set-up, and then continue to crawl higher in the first hour of trading before the indices began to sharply lose ground.  Today’s sharp drop eventually found support at the mid-December trading lows which coincided with the 150 day SMA and included some positive MACD divergence on the intraday charts which helped the S&P index rally 25 points off the lows but in a very late sell off gave back more than half those gains before the closing bells.  In the short term, after losing nearly 100 S&P points in the past 2 weeks, the market is stretched and could be due for a rally but overall we remain cautious that this decline is not yet complete.

In Individual sectors on the WSC Scoreboard, Energy (XLE) did NOT lead to the downside although it did finish down 1.56% in 2nd place.  Today’s leader to the downside was Transportation (IYT) finishing down 1.70% and inside the index CSX (CSX) was a major contributor of the move finishing the session  down 3.99%.  Financials (XLF) put in a weak performance today finishing down 1.53% led by the large banks including Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan (JPM), and Citigroup (C) which finished down 2.99%, 2.59%, and 3.52% respectively.  Today’s outperformer was the Utilities (XLU) which our chart shows finished flat.

Today’s Economic data disappointed but was not market moving.  The FOMC minutes and Jobs data will be front and center this week.

Economic Calendar week of 1/5/15

Reporting EPS 1/7/14 Pre-Market:

Companies reporting EPS 1/7/15 pre-market

Analyst Comments:

Upgrades 1/6/15

Downgrades 1/6/15

Initiations 1/6/15

Price Target Changes 1/6/15