Try Campaigner Now!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Downside Follow-Through


By Harry Boxer, The Technical Trader

The stock market indices suffered another down day as a follow-up to yesterday’s break, and confirmed that the downtrend may be underway.

Early in the morning they gapped lower and moved sharply down to get extremely oversold intraday on a short-term resulting in a 5-wave advance back that tested yesterday afternoon’s rally’s high on the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500. But they failed right there near the 1971 range on the NDX and 1176 on the SPX, and a 3-wave decline ensued. The indices retested the lows, made higher lows, and then backed and filled into the close.

Net on the day, however, the Dow was down 59.94 at 10,866.83, the S&P 500 down 7.73 to 1165.87, and Nasdaq 100 down 10.71 at 1958.26.

Advance-declines were 4 to 1 negative on the New York Stock Exchange and 3 to 1 negative on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 3 1/2 to 1 negative on New York on total volume of about 1 1/2 billion. Nasdaq traded just over 2.9 billion and had a better than a 3 to 1 ratio negative ratio of declining volume over advancing volume.

TheTechTrader.com board, as a result, was mostly lower, except for the ultra-short ETFs, of course. Several stocks did manage to close with gains. Leading the way was Google (GOOG) up 3.39 at 509.76 and Amazon.com (AMZN) up 1.10 to 130.93.

Acme Packet, Inc. (APKT) advanced 64 cents to 26.96, and China Agritech (CAGC) after getting hammered down to 13.51 closed at 15.10 on a nice reversal, up 50 cents.

Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) snapped back from recent losses and closed at 6.19, up 41 cents on 25 million plus. Pixelworks Inc. (PXLW) snapped back 23 cents to 4.94.

Among the ultra-shorts, Direxion Daily Emerging Markets Bear 3x (EDZ) jumped another 2.64 to 50.13, the UltraShort Real Estate ProShares (SRS) 74 cents to 26.11, and the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX), a portfolio position, 97 cents to 23.34, although that was a point off the earlier high. The Direxion Daily Large Cap Bear 3x (BGZ) advanced 28 cents to 13.74, and the Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3x (FAZ) 22 cents to 12.74.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices gapped down and made new pullback lows at the 1936 1/2 level on the NDX and the 1158 zone on the S&P 500 before bouncing early in the morning and then pulling back in the afternoon. A late bounce pared the losses, but still it was a decidedly negative day both technically and pricewise.

Good trading!

Harry

Free 15-Day Trial to Harry Boxer's Real-Time Technical Trading Diary

No comments: