Just like that bulls are back in the driver seat and the market is within arms reach of fresh multi-year highs. Gapping through key resistance areas like the 10 and 50 day moving average is the best path to take it seems.
Today was a good day to start putting any sidelined cash back to work. If you are looking for fresh breakouts off earnings definitely check out both Polaris (PII), Vmware (VMW), and Intralinks (IL) which were the highlight stocks of the day. Apple (AAPL) also blew out its guidance (anyone surprised? Anyone?) and is up right now 4% in after-hours trading.
One area of several I like right now is retail in general. There are some great names making strong moves and are priming for further breakouts. Stocks like Tiffany (TIF), Crocs (CROX), Deckers (DECK), Abercrombie (ANF), Lululemon (LULU), Coach (COH), Vera Bradley (VRA), Ralph Lauren (RL), and Under Armour (UA) are all on my watch list at the moment.
What are your thoughts and favorite picks for this current market? Do you think we are moving higher from here? Any hot stocks to watch? I’ve opened up comments on this post so feel free to discuss.
| Trend | Nasdaq | S&P 500 | Russell 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long-Term | Up | Up | Up |
| Intermediate | (+) Up | (+) Up | Up |
| Short-term | (+) Up | (+) Up | (+) Up |
(+) Indicates an upward reclassification today
(-) Indicates a downward reclassification today
Lat Indicates a Lateral trend
*** I’m simply using the indices’ relations to their 200, 50 and 10-day moving averages to tell me the long, intermediate and short-term trends, respectively.
We are going to be moving higher without a doubt. Do you think that the market will fill today’s gap area first though? I am almost wondering if I should wait to start accumulating stock until we see a pull back. Back up the truck.
I think the ticker is VMW for VM Ware.. I am glad that there is an update at tradermike now… Keep up the good work ..
Short week has lived upto its reputation of being bullish .. that should not really matter since the prices are up with good volume .. Is it too early to say that the mood has been set Bullish for this earnings season ..
Ticker updated and I agree regarding earnings sentiment. Today was a big day though for bulls and am curious to see if the market has another nice session tomorrow riding off Apple’s “blowout” quarter. Thanks for supporting the site.
Re Kev if you look back the last few months these gaps are filled so I agree never a bad idea to buy over time.
Re the descending channel in your chart of $SPX, over at stocktiming.com, in the Wednesday update, Marty Chenard drew a symmetrical triangle on the chart for the Nasdaq 100. It’s a breakout either way. Just for your interest.
I find it extremely hard to be positive about this market when almost all of the significant moves come in the after-hours courtesy of the futures. It seems whenever there is the slightest bit of news that can be construed as positive… it’s used as an excuse by those under the Fed’s supervision to ramp the futures higher overnight and push us past key resistance levels.
I would hold my nose and jump in as I have for the past couple of years, but now with QE2 ending I think we’re in a seriously sketchy area here. I feel like all of the ‘big money’ is probably playing it safe. This market has not once performed well since the spring of 2009 without QE. And now we’re in stratospheric overbought levels. (I use the Tobin’s -Q and Shiller PE for my valuation methods, plus the usual indicators) I DON’T use CNBC.
My logic is this… if QE2 is ending in June, most assume that means unwinding your positions in May and move to the sidelines then. But if you run a book with a few hundred million dollars at risk or more (banks, hedge funds, etc.)… you’re not going to risk waiting to see what happens. You’ve made serious money being long over the past year + and you’re not going to want to give any of it back. So the inclination will be get out sooner.
On the other hand, the Fed is paranoid to death about the market selling off and it will use every measure possible, legal and illegal to keep the market up and try to convince people to not sell, etc. So I suspect we’ll get more of these ‘great’ after-hour sessions trying desperately to push the market over every conceivable resistance level. And then we might even attempt to push higher, but with so few participants we’ll basically go nowhere, and eventually sell off hard beginning in May.