Stock Market Opening Report - November 16, 2012

(By Rich Bieglmeier) Thursday was another poor day for bulls. Try as they might, stocks don't seem to have the fight to turn green since the election. Worries over the fiscal cliff persist, but growing tensions everywhere you look in the Middle-East has Wall Street on the edge.

Things certainly weren't helped by a disastrous Jobless Claims report that came in way over expectations. Economists pegged 376,000 as the target, but a whopping 439,000 were reported. It would be nice to blame Sandy, but plenty of the new claims came from Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Despite the negative tenor of Thursday's action, more red on hefty volume, the equity markets are started to trace out oversold conditions. Nearly 90% of NYSE listed stocks are trading below their 10-day moving averages, and the indexes are bouncing along the bottom of their Bollinger Bands.

While the trend is down, obviously, we do think a little relief is coming, and probably soon. However, any rally is likely to get stuck at the indexes respective 10 to 12-day moving averages, or around 2.900 for the NASDAQ, 12,800 for the Dow, and 1,375 on the S&P 500.

Next week's Black Friday sales could be the tonic needed to put bears into hibernation, for a little while at least. If shoppers sling the plastic and part ways with the Benjamins, it will give bulls a case to build to stem the tide of selling.

That's it for this week; here are next week's iEstimates.

And, Last week's results: