The indices certainly had some volatility on Thursday, up sharply in the morning and down sharply in the afternoon, taking back all of the gains and then some, closing mixed on the indices at the end of the day.
The day started out with a big gap up. They ran very sharply in the first half hour to 40 minutes, and then they backed and filled, flagged, and made new highs by mid-morning, and then rolled over, took out support, and went into a 5-wave decline until mid-day when they bounced and did a perfect retracement to resistance that failed, rolled over to new lows, but the S&P 500 held at yesterday?s late lows, and had a very sharp rally until about 10 minutes before the close when they backed off sharply again.
Net on the day the Dow was down 17.61 to 8168.12, about 140 points off its high. The S&P 500 was off 0.83 to 872.81, 16 points off the high, and the Nasdaq 100 was up 11.95 to 1394.33, some 24 points off its high. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was up 6.99, a 2 1/2 percent gain, but 7 points off its high.
With all the afternoon selling, the technicals still managed to close to the upside on New York, where advance-declines were about 300 ahead. However, Nasdaq was almost dead-even flat. Up/down volume was about 9 to 8 positive on New York on total volume of more than 1.7 billion. Nasdaq traded just under 2.8 billion and had a 16 to 11 positive volume ratio.
TheTechTrader.com board was mostly higher, but many of those stocks that ended up small fractions were much higher earlier in the day. Point-plus gainers included Research in Motion (RIMM) up 2.71 to 69.50, SunPower (SPWR) up 2.33 to 27.38, portfolio position SNX up 1.05 to 21.53, Cree Inc. (CREE) up 1.36 to 27.39, Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) up 1.22 to 18.38, nearly reaching 20.
Goldman Sachs (GS) was up 1.32, but JP Morgan (JPM) was down 1.48 in a mixed financial section. Wells Fargo (WFC) was barely up, by just 4 cents to 20.01. Bank of America (BAC) was up 25 cents to 8.93.
Most of the ETFs, both long and short, were extremely narrowly changed today. For example, the Direxion Large Cap Bull 3X Shares (BGU) was up a nickel, while the Direxion Large Cap Bear 3X Shares (BGZ) was unchanged. The iShares MSCI Brazil Index ETF (EWZ) was down 12 cents, and the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (FXI) up 2 cents. The Direxion Financial Bear 3x Shares (FAZ) was up 11 cents, and the Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) down 10 cents.
Very narrow movement in the ETFs today, indicative of a sharply higher early morning market and then a strong decline in the afternoon that brought them back to near unchanged.
Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices made new 2-month rally highs early in the morning, gave back all of it on the Dow and S&P 500, but managed to hold a nearly 12 point gain on the Nasdaq 100 and 7 on the SOXX.
So a mixed close, and despite the sharp afternoon pullback, the indices have still not broken either trendline or moving average support yet on the hourly charts. But we?ll probably soon see if the afternoon decline brings any downside follow-through that changes that picture.
Good trading!
Harry
