A stunning week and thank goodness it's over! Records were set on the downside with major averages sliding 18% over the course of five tumultuous sessions. Over the course of the last two weeks, we essentially met the definition of "crash" - a more than 20% drop in a short period of time. Selling was relentless all week long with only the NASDAQ Composite managing to close in positive territory by a few points on Friday.

As an indication of how pessimistic investors were this week, you have to realize that this selling took place despite the unprecedented coordinated global rate cut, decent earnings and forward guidance from bellwethers IBM and GE and commitments by the U.S. government to backstop commercial paper.

The short selling ban expired at midnight on Wednesday yet financial stocks rallied on Friday. Go figure.

All in all, it was a good week to be short or in cash. Investors focused not only on the continuing problems in the credit markets but also on accelerating problems in the economy. Jobless claims continued to signal tough times for workers, retailers reported very bad numbers indicating consumers are hunkering down. The plunge in commodities including oil, corn and soybeans signaled the possibilities of a global contraction. In Europe and Iceland, governments took steps to guarantee bank deposits or took over banks outright. It was a downright scary week.

TradeRadar Alert HQ Stock Market Statistics --

Each week our Alert HQ process scans over 7200 stocks and ETFs and records their technical characteristics. Primarily we look for BUY and SELL signals for our free stock alerts; however, we also summarize the data in order to gain insights in the week's market action. The following chart based on daily data presents the state of our technical indicators:


Wow, the data looks like it is trying to fall off the chart.

Moving Average Analysis --

Out of 7200 stocks that we track, can you believe that only a couple of hundred are above their 20-day moving average or above their 50-day moving average? I keep an especially close eye on the number of stocks whose 20-day MA is above their 50-day MA. It is hard to believe that this number has fallen to less than 500. That is only 7% of all stocks we track.