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Top Ten SP500 Leaders and Laggards on January 21

On a major day in the equity markets, it can be a good idea – particularly for swing traders – to know what the top ten and bottom ten performing S&P 500 stocks were on the session, which could generate a few trading candidates or ideas.

Let’s take a look at the top 10 and bottom 10 percentage performing stocks in today’s wild market action.

First, the Top Ten:

Due to earnings, eBay (EBAY) and Estee Lauder (EL) were the top two percentage gainers, followed by financial stock Comerica and then Fifth-Third Bancorp.

“Wait a minute!” you ask – “How can ANY financial company make its way into the top performers today?!”

I have a potential answer in my prior post:

Fallout from Big Bank Legislation May Help Small Banks.

In fact, 5 of the Top Ten performers (as of the close) were small financial companies (CMA, FITB, KEY, HBAN, and STI).

Remember, President Obama appears to be tackling BIG banks, which could provide an opening for small banks to pick up market share, or at least avoid potentially crippling legislation.

Here is a chart of one of those stocks:  Comerica (CMA):

While it’s great to focus on the good, let’s now turn our attention to the “Bottom Ten” stocks that suffered the largest percentage declines today.

The Bottom Ten:

Two financial companies – including ‘big’ JP Morgan Chase (JPM) made their way into the biggest losers today.

Otherwise, materials and steel companies suffered sharp declines, including US Steel (X), AK Steel (AKS) along with Massey Energy (MEE) and Freeport-McMoRan (FCX).

Here is a chart of International Paper (IP) showing a lengthy negative divergence preceding today’s solid crack through EMA support:

While scanning is very important to narrowing down swing trading stock candidates to trade, sometimes you can also get good ideas by watching leaders and laggards on a key (or major) day in the market… by assessing which stocks went with the day’s trend (down) and which went against it.

Corey Rosenbloom, CMT
Afraid to Trade.com

Follow Corey on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/afraidtotrade

*Data courtesy TradeStation RadarScreen as of close; charts from StockCharts

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