The market had a volatile session today. They were down early, then up sharply in a steep snapback rally after the first hour that took the indices right up to retest those key overhead resistance levels.
The market had a volatile session today. They were down early, then up sharply in a steep snapback rally after the first hour that took the indices right up to retest those key overhead resistance levels. They couldn’t break through again, pulled back in an orderly fashion for most of the rest of the session until late in the day when they accelerated to the downside. Only in the last 15 minutes did they snapback to pare the losses.
Still, net on the day the Dow was down 49.05 at 10,452, the S&P 500 down 6.18 at 1107.93, and the Nasdaq 100 down 10.88 at 1798.21.
Advance-declines were 3 to 2 negative on New York and a similar amount on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 2 to 1 negative on New York on total volume of about 1.16 billion. Nasdaq traded just over 1.9 billion and had a 12 to 7 negative volume ratio.
TheTechTrader.com board as a result of the all the vacillations were narrowly mixed. On the plus side, Brigham Exploration (BEXP) on an oil find was up 1 to 12.65 on 6 million shares, reaching a new 52-week high of 12.79 earlier in the session.
That was the only point-plus gainer on our board.
Large fractional gainers included Rambus (RMBS), up 74 cents to 22.27 on 6 million shares. US Energy (USEG) advanced 46 cents to 5.50, as they shared partial ownership of that BEXP oil well. Genco Shipping (GNK) was up 41 cents to 23.64, SourceFire (FIRE) 96 cents to 23.82, and Canadian Solar (CSIQ) 85 cents to 25.63.
All of those stocks were higher earlier in the session, the Direxion Financial Bear 3x Shares (FAZ) 86 cents to 20.56, and the U.S. Oil Fund ETF (USO) on firmer oil was up 35 cents to 35.93.
On the downside, AsiaInfo (ASIA) dropped 1.17 at 30.99, China Agritech (CAGC) 1.28 to 28.40, Goldman Sachs (GS) 3.36 to 162.74, and the Direxion Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) 3.18 to 70.81.
Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, it was down early, with an opening gap lower. A very sharp rally back to test resistance failed to break through, and then they rolled over and then accelerated lower in the last hour before snapping back very late in the session.
Net on the day it was a losing session for the indices, as they retested support and moving averages on the hourly charts.
We’ll soon see what significance today’s late sell-off had and whether or not they continue to the downside.
Harry Boxer is a technical consultant to many Wall Street hedge funds and large institutional traders, and author of TheTechTrader.com.