Afternoon Comeback Pares Session Losses
By Harry Boxer, TheTechTrader.com (www.thetechtrader.com)
The markets had an interesting session, closing negatively on the day but coming back in the afternoon to pare the losses. The Fed announced today and left rates unchanged. That did trigger some afternoon volatility but much less than we've seen in the past, and the trend at the end of the day was inconclusive.
The day started out with a move up. They failed at resistance and came down to lower lows, but the real drop occurred just before the lunch hour when the indices rolled over hard, took out yesterday's lows, and tested Friday's lows. The indices did bounce back before the Fed announcement, and when the Fed announced they accelerated a bit, but failed at resistance on 2 occasions and backed and filled into the close.
Net on the day, the Dow was down around 13, the S&P 500 about 1 1/2, and the Nasdaq 100 just under 10. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down 3 1/3, putting pressure on the NDX.
The technicals were negative on advance/declines by about 3 to 2 on New York and a like ratio on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 9 to 5 negative on New York on total volume over 1.5 billion, and a little more than 2 to 1 negative on Nasdaq on volume of over 1.9 billion.
TheTechTrader.com board was mostly narrowly mixed. The star of the day was Mamma.com (MAMA), which announced a new search engine for videos. The stock ran hard all day on heavy volume, closing at 4.28, up 1.98, or 82 percent, on the session, on just under 29 million shares traded. It was even higher in the after market
The other star of the day was biotech EPIX Pharmaceuticals (EPIX), which closed at 7.09, up 1.57 on 6.8 million, a gain of 28 percent.
Other than that, all stocks on our board on the plus side were only up fractionally today.
On the downside, Korean online community Gmarket (GMKT) was down 1.18, Home Inns & Hotels (HMIN) down 1.08 and Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) gave back 2.69 after yesterday's 3 , point gain.
Acorda Therapeutics (ACOR) fell 69 cents, CNTF 60 cents, Lumera (LMRA) 35 cents, and TRT 40 cents.
Chinese stocks were volatile today but generally closed down on the day.
Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the NDX in particular pressed hard on its intermediate uptrend line today, but held on 2-3 occasions and managed to firm in the afternoon, but is not far off that key level. A break below the recent lows in the 1768-71 zone would be ominous, and a break below 1760 would be a definite bearish sign.
On the stronger S&P index, current short-term support is around the 1404-05 zone, and a break beneath that would also be negative for the indices. The S&P 500 is creating a fan pattern on its hourly charts. A move below 1400 and then below the 1390 zone would be very negative. Beneath that support exists around the 1375-78 zone. On the NDX secondary support beneath the key 1760 area would be around 1740-45.
Good trading!
Harry
