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It was a pretty quiet day on the market. The Dow was down, but the other indexes were up, and there was really nothing on the economic or world scene to give the market any guidance. Tomorrow morning will be quite different, since there are three important economic reports hitting the wires before the market opens – Housing Starts, the PPI, and Industrial Production. (Toolbox users can see this on the new Economic Calender).
Many of the indices, on an intraday basis, have head and shoulders pattern with retracements taking place over the course of the last couple of trading days. I've shown the S&P 500 a couple of times already. Here is the China Index, with a similar pattern:
Lehman Brothers (LEH) announced their first quarterly loss ever as a public company this morning, and a relief rally took place among all the investment banks. I mentioned last week that I thought LEH was at a bottom, and it added as much as 30% to its price in just a couple of days. The Securities Broker/Deader index is right back to its Fibonacci level again.
The same can be said of the Transports.
The NASDAQ Composite is safely below its major resistance level, shown in purple below. I purchased a large QQQQ put position near today's highs based on my speculation that the retracement on the NASDAQ was just about done.
The pattern on $MSH strengthens this belief. Obviously piercing the $620 level would eliminate this point of view.
The volume today was unbelievably low. Just look at the QQQQ volume – – – this is at "holiday" levels.
I don't have much to say about individual stocks. I got out of about 10 positions today – – some to take profits, others to cut risk – – the agricultural stocks are still on a moon trajectory…….
…..and I re-entered FSLR today, with a stop at $289. I let a nice profit on these puts slip away due to surprising strength, with the price cutting back above the former supporting line. Once more into the breach, dear friends.
Tomorrow morning is almost sure to have some fireworks. I'll see you then.
