March 19, 2024

China, Icahn, & IBB lead market lower

The Market: A gap-and-go day to the downside as the S&P 500 finished nearly 50 points lower on the session as media pointed to renewed concerns over China’s economy and cautious comments from Carl Icahn on high yield bonds and the stock market.  The Dow (DIA) was the relative outperformer today finishing down only -1.9% while the NASDAQ (QQQ) finished down the most at -2.85% on the session but YTD that is reversed with the DIA down slightly over –10% while the QQQ is only down slightly over -3%. Short-term the market appears to be very oversold here and we…

Oil gets crushes while market dips

The Market: A small down day which could have looked worse if not for a late day rally off the lows.  Interesting to see the leaders to the downside were the Dow (DIA) and Russell 2000 (IWM).  We were looking for the market to close just off the lows and then gap down tomorrow for a short-term long opportunity but today’s end of day rally has changed that set-up. Overall we remain cautious on the broad market and believe the choppy trading of late will continue. Energy (XLE) led to the downside, again, as crude oil continues to slide reaching…

XLU stands out in today’s action

Index & Sector performance 2/18/15 The Market: A choppy session overall which ended up finishing flat.  Some negative divergence is building on the S&P 500 60 minute chart but, even when it leads to a pullback, the divergence can exist for many day.  We wouldn’t be surprised to see the index continue to meander and drift higher for the remainder of the week into Options expiration. In individual sectors it was the Utilities (XLU) leading the way and by a wide margin finishing up 2.37%.  We would be watching the XLU closely here to see if it can build on…

S&P follows crude lower yet again

Index & Sector performance 12/15/14 The Market: Crude oil started to rebound in Sunday’s overnight session and helped the major indices start the day with a gap higher but the optimism was short lived.  Oil quickly started to lose ground after the open and reached fresh 52 week lows by noon taking the S&P with it.  Both indices found a midday bottom but only the S&P was able to close above those lows. We are interested to see if there is follow-through on the downside tomorrow in the S&P and if so we suggest traders remaining open to the possibility…

EPS helped shrug off bad overseas data

Index & Sector performance 11/20/14 The Market: It doesn’t look like the S&P 500 (SPY) had a strong session but considering the futures were down roughly 10 points pre-market reportedly due to weak data out of Europe and China, to finish up a few points is a strong showing.  Yesterday’s laggard was today’s leader as the Russell 2000 (IWM ) finished up over 1% clawing back most of yesterday’s losses and the Dow (DIA) was helped by Intel (INTC) which gained 4.66% after announcing a dividend hike and solid 2015 expected revenue growth. In individual sectors, Retail (XRT) led today…

Choppy session ahead of Jobs

Index & Sector performance 3/6/14 The Market: Overall today was a choppy session which started with an overnight breakout which couldn’t gain steam and retraced back to the breakout levels in early morning trading.  The market then found a bottom and rallied to the 1880ES pivot which acted as resistance twice finally sending the index back down toward the original breakout region in late day trading. We expect the choppy trading to continue until the Non-Farm payroll number tomorrow at 8:30am EST.  We have consensus estimates currently at 151K with an Unemployment number of 6.6%.  Below is a recap of…