Afternoon Snapback Brings Narrow, Mixed Finish
By Harry Boxer, The Technical Trader (
www.thetechtrader.com)
The week ended in very mixed fashion, but they sure made up for early losses by coming back late in the day. The day started out with an initial upmove in the first couple minutes, and then came down suddenly and sharply, dropping about 25 NDX points and about 12 S&P points in the first 90 minutes. By mid-morning they reached their lows for the session with the S&P holding yesterday's mid-day support. The first snap back rally took back about 2/3 of the losses, but they rolled over sharply in early afternoon and retested. That was successful, as the indices held their 6-day rising trendlines, and the market then turned it around and rallied strongly to new session highs on the S&P, not quite so on the NDX. They backed and filled in the last 20-30 minutes.
Net on the day the Dow was down 5.86, the S&P 500 up 1.78, and the Nasdaq 100 down just a paltry 0.07 points. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was up 1.95. So, as you can see, a very narrowly mixed picture today.
The technicals reflected that with advance-declines ahead by just 180 issues on New York but down by 400 issues on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was just slightly negative on New York with about 1 1/4 billion traded. Nasdaq traded 2 1/4 billion, and had an almost exact amount of shares of volume up as volume down.
TheTechTrader.com board also had a mixed day, but there were several big gainers. Portfolio position China Finance Online (JRJC) jumped 4.11 or 24% today on more than 5 million shares. Solarfun (SOLF), a recent pick of ours and recent portfolio holding, was up 4.37 to 22.84 on 22.6 million shares, a huge day there. Canadian Solar (CSIQ) went along for the ride, up another 1.30 to 44.90. JA Solar (JASO) in that sector was up 1.02, and Trina Solar (TSL) 1.89.
But Ascent Solar (ASTI) dropped 1.17 and several others showed a mixed picture today.
In the shipping sector, it was another strong session, with DryShips (DRYS) up 4.24, Excel Maritime (EXM) up 4.18, and TBS International (TBSI) up 1.14.
In the semiconductor area, Broadcom (BRCM) advanced 1.18 to new multi-month highs.
On the dowside, in addition to Ascent Solar (ASTI), Chindex (CHDX) lost 1.02. General Steel (GSI) after an earnings announcement got smacked back 1.86. VMware (VMW) lost 2.48.
So it was a mixed picture but there certainly were some outstanding gainers as well as losers.
Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices came down sharply, snapped back, pulled back and then rallied again, so we had four different legs, two up and two down today, and as a result the indices closed mixed for the day.
However, we're near the highs for the entire 4-month move on both the NDX and SPX, and it's going to be very interesting to see what they do after today's options expiration and whether or not they reverse this or continue the trend early next week. It sure looks like they could be set up for a reversal soon.
Good trading!
Harry
