Daily Commentary

It is very difficult to remember a day as surprising as the intraday price movement on the major US Stock market as January 23, 2008. What’s surprising is that an almost identical pattern occurred… 24 hours earlier! Let’s take a quick look at the S&P 500 index on the 5-minute chart for yet another perfect…

For two days in a row now, we have seen massive gaps to the downside which have been filled rapidly to the upside, and the trauma of the morning has been erased almost instantly. Savvy traders who employ “gap fade” tactics have potentially profited immensely from recent developments, but that does not mean these outcomes…

Today’s action was incredibly bullish from the perspective of short-term sector rotation. How so? Typically, defensive sectors rise when larger traders expect falling market prices as a whole. Such examples would be the Consumer Staples, Health Care, and Utilities sectors. When larger traders show confidence in the market, they will aggressive purchase shares of companies…

Investors breathed a temporary sigh of relief because the markets closed down 1%, rather than the 4% that they had originally reached at the beginning of today’s market action. The intraday chart tells the story: Traders woke up to a 400 point drop in the Dow Jones index, only to see the market recover a…

While I suspected we would get an early morning bounce following the epic 400 point opening gap, I didn’t suspect the gap to fade as rapidly or violently as it did. History was indeed made – in the form of one of the most amazing intraday gap fades ever! The Federal Reserve surprised the market…

A tremendously precipitous situation awakes US stock traders on Tuesday morning. World markets deeply fear a potential US Recession and what it may mean for them. Traders who spent the day away from the market, and who do not check in to see overnight markets, will be in for an absolute shock when they open…

As requested, I am providing a sector breakdown of market returns to date. It’s not all horrible out there in the stock market; on the contrary, the Health Care sector appreciated almost 8% to date! Indeed, Health Care, Consumer Staples, and Utilities are known as ‘defensive’ sectors where traders/investors go to seek shelter on the…

We have seen a true “correction” via a 10% decline in price in the 13 trading days of 2008 so far, not including the peak to current decline from the October/November 2007 highs. It’s always good to know where the markets are for the year, because so many intraday or swing traders can miss this…

Market leaders and high-fliers Apple Inc (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) have fallen dramatically from their all-time highs of late 2007, which is a major reason why the broader markets have turned negative. Let’s look at their daily charts: Google has fallen $140 from a high of $740 to a test of $600 yesterday. Due to…

The US Stock Market has been whipsawing traders up and down over the last week, with the market moving 1% to 2% up and down per day. That translates into swings of 200 Dow Points up and down on back-to-back days. It seems like when traders get a signal to go long, the market reverses…