Tue September 15th 2009
Choppy Session Still Closes at New 2009 Highs by Harry Boxer,
www.TheTechTrader.comThe markets had an up-session adding to the recent gains and set new 2009 highs on most of the indices. But in a very choppy fashion.
The day started out with a thrust at the get-go that tested 1700 on the Nadsaq 100 and reached 1052 on the S&P 500. A sharp selloff held key initial support, and then they bounced sharply to retest the highs, stair-stepped higher in a 5-wave advance mid-day, and then backed off in early afternoon. They came on strong in the last hour and a half to reach new highs for the session, with NDX reaching 1703.46 and the SPX as high as 1056.04. A last 5-minute pullback brought them slightly off those highs.
Net on the day the Dow was up 56.61 at 9683.41, the S&P 500 up 3.29 at 1052.63, and the Nasdaq 100 up 5.77 at 1699.53.
Advance-declines were 21 to 9 positive on New York and about 15 to 11 on Nasdaq. So the Nasdaq advance was a lot narrower. However, up/down volume was just 4 to 3 positive on New York on total volume of under 1.5 billion. Nasdaq traded a strong 2.4 billion-plus and had a little less than 2 to 1 positive volume ratio.
TheTechTrader.com board was very narrowly mixed as a result of the choppy action. On the upside, China Green Agriculture (CGA) snapped back 1.02 to 13.48. That was the only point-plus gainer on our board.
There was only two point-plus losers, and one was American International Group (AIG), which lost 2.31 to 38.80.
Junior biotechs had a positive session. Sinovac (SVA) gained 44 cents to 10.24 on 17.7 million, Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ) 32 cents to 9.92 on 3 million, and BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX) 94 cents to 11.67 on more than 10 million today. All of those were off their highs for the day.
In addition, low-priced biotech CEL-SCI (CVM) jumped 44 cents or 48% to 1.36 on heavy volume of 66 million shares.
On the downside, Goldman Sachs (GS) lost 1.05, JP Morgan (JPM) 56 cents, and Citigroup (C) 40 cents, although Wells Fargo (WFC) was up 56 cents in a generally weak financial sector.
Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices were choppy but higher today, and held their multi-session trendlines and moving averages, and until those are broken for starters the indices can still be squeezed higher. Key support to watch tomorrow is at around 1688-90 NDX and at 1043-45 zone on the SPX.
Good trading!
Harry
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