The stock market indices had a mixed session with Nasdaq leading the way up today. However, the blue chips were lower. Nasdaq trailed yesterday and tried to play catch-up today, while the market consolidated.
The day started out with a bang to the upside, and reached the session highs and rally highs on the S&P 500 up around 1251 and change early on today. The NDX at that point got up to 2314. They then had a sharp sell-off, reaching near the 2290-91 zone on the NDX from the 2314 area. The S&P 500 dropped from 1251 down to 1240, but they bounced, and pulled back again to retest S&P 500, and held. The NDX made a higher high, and then they rallied into the afternoon making slightly new highs for the day on the NDX, reaching near 2315. The S&P 500 could not get anywhere near the earlier highs, and backed off into the close.
Net on the day, the Dow was down 25.20 at 12,020.48, which wasn't bad after being up 400 yesterday. The S&P 500 was down just 2.38 to 1244.58, and the Nasdaq 100 up 14.00 even at 2309.20.
Advance-declines were 3 to 2 negative on the New York Stock Exchange, and 3 to 2 negative on Nasdaq as well. Up/down volume was 4 to 3 negative on New York, with total volume of about 800 million shares traded today. Nasdaq traded 1.8 billion shares and had a 4 to 3 positive volume ratio.
TheTechTrader.com, as a result, was mixed today. Leading the way again today were some of the large-cap stocks. Apple Inc. (AAPL) was up 5.73 to 387.93, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) up 4.84 to 197.13, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) 1.45 to 189.45, and Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG) 1.48 to 323.04. Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) snapped back from some of the losses it had yesterday, up 2.64 to 67.17.
Some of the low-priced stocks had a big day. Transcept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (TSPT), a stock that we traded today, was up 1.51 to 8.48, or nearly 22%, on 3.3 million shares. Magal Security Systems Ltd. (MAGS) was up 86 cents to 5.08, Zoltek Companies Inc. (ZOLT) 86 cents to 9.07, and Mitek Systems Inc.