What a day! There was something for just about everybody today — except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke’s talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I’m usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that’s exactly what happened today. Here’s the intraday Nasdaq chart:
The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:
IBD summed up today’s action well:
The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn’t make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%
Leading stocks’ action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD’s gauge of top-rated stocks.
The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.
But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.
So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I’m not seeing very many swing setups at all — long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT’s post-earnings action won’t help the Nasdaq much either.)
