March 19, 2024

The NightCap

The Market: Not a great start to 2016 for the Bulls but could have been much worse if not for a late end-of-day rally.   So far in after-hours trading the market has continued higher but we will need to see if these gains hold over-night as well as into early trading tomorrow. No Sector was spared in today’s trading but the XLU was the clear relative outperformer finishing down only 0.21% followed by the worst performer for 2015, XLE, finishing down 0.41%. Tomorrow is a light Economic Data session with only Vehicle Sales being reported but later in the week…

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…

Market finishes near lows

Index & Sector performance 5/26/15 The Market: A strong down day for the market which saw all the major market indices on the WSC Scoreboard finish down over 1% on the session near the lows for the day.  The futures are up in the after hours session but they will have to prove that this is not just a relief bounce. Utilities (XLU), Consumer Discretionary (XLY), and Consumer Staples (XLP) were the relative out-performers finishing down 0.63%, 0.75%, and 0.79% respectively.  After reaching a high of $62.58 on 5/6/15, Crude Oil is back below $60/barrel after losing 3% in today’s…

QQQ & IWM reach new highs

Index & Sector performance 2/26/15 The Market: More churn today in the markets but again the NASDAQ (QQQ) and Russell 2000 (IWM) showed more strength than the S&P 500 (SPY) with the QQQ and IWM reaching new 52-week closing highs on the session. Crude oil lost over 5% today which helped send the Energy (XLE) sector 1.88% lower.  We noted in our 2/18/15 nightly recap when the XLE was trading above $81 that we would look for a pullback toward $78 as a buying opportunity.  Closing today at $79.35, we would ideally like to see lower levels before dipping into…

Quiet start to the month

Index & Sector performance 11/3/14 The Market: The market started the day slightly higher building on last week’s extremely strong session but the market ran out of steam in the short term and the S&P 500 started pulling back in afternoon trading finishing flat on the session.  All in all it was a low volume quiet session but the Bulls can point to the fact that they didn’t give ground after reaching new highs. We do not expect the remainder of the month to be as quiet as today and would plan for swings in both directions much like October…

Tech leads quiet up session

Index & Sector performance 9/10/14 The Market: Administrative note: we will be traveling the remainder of the week so there will be no updates after tonight. A nice bounce back in the markets after yesterday’s late day sell off.  The leader in the broad indices was the NASDAQ (QQQ) keying, again, off Apple (AAPL) which finished the session up 3.07%. After being a relative outperformer yesterday in a bad tape, HeathCare (XLV) was the leader on the WSC Scoreboard today finishing the session up 0.70%.  Utilities (XLU), yesterday’s biggest loser, saw more downside follow-through finishing the session 0.44% lower.  Also…

US Government shuts down and gains open up

Index & Sector performance 10/01/13 The Market: The old market adage Buy the rumor and Sell the news is somewhat in affect here today with the markets reaction to the Government shutdown.  As we noted in last night’s Game Plan, with the realization of the shutdown now in affect and the worry of the shutdown gone, short term longs would look for opportunity to trade a bounce.  A gap up was quickly consolidated after roughly 30 minutes of trading and then pressed higher until 12:30 pm EST. After 12:30 there was a roll over which took the index down until…