Good day! Someone seems to have forgotten to set the alarm on Monday to remind folks that the market was in fact open! Those participants that did show up didn't have a great deal to say. The most significant move of the entire session as a whole was the one into the open. The indices managed to gap slightly higher and then rally somewhat in the first 15 minutes of trading. This did take the Dow Jones Industrial Average once more to new all-time highs, but after that it seemed like no one really had any idea of just what to do next. The entire remainder of the day in the S&P 500 was spent in about a 2 point range, which is one of the narrowest ranges of the year and if we removed the first 15 minutes, it was the narrowest such period of trading seen so far this year.

The Dow Jones Ind. Ave. and Nasdaq Composite did have a bit more movement intraday than the S&Ps, but even then the trading range on the sessions was severely smaller than average. Without any strong overall market bias, each of these two indices went their own way throughout the session. The Dow slowly climbed and ended the session just off highs, while the Nasdaq displayed a more bearish bias and closed just a few ticks from the lows of the day.

Often a very tight range such as that which took place throughout the morning, will break strongly in the afternoon and provide an afternoon trend. Due to the trend extension on the 30 minute charts, I was expecting the range to break lower, despite the strength in the Dow. The Nasdaq began that breakdown early on in the afternoon, but retraced that entire early afternoon decline into the 14:00 ET reversal period. At that point I took another shot at it, bit it took an entire hour for the index to turn over and head to new afternoon lows. Even with the late day breakdown, the momentum failed to build and the strongest selling only lasted about 10 minutes before the market stalled once more until the close.







The end of the day results strongly display the day's divergence. The Dow ($DJI) managed to gain 48.35 points, while the S&P 500 ($SPX) rose 3.86 points, but the Nasdaq Composite ($COMPX) took back all of the morning gains and fell 1.20 points by the close. It was also a very slow day in individual stocks as well, without a lot of excitement from the top gainers and losers, most of which were lesser known issues. Some exceptions were BRK.A, AA, AL, AH, WEN, AAPL and RIMM on the gainers lists, and RIG, PBR, AMZN and GOOG on the losers lists. Given that Wednesday is another FOMC day, we can easily see the indecision continue throughout the first half of the week.

Toni Hansen is President and Co-founder of the Bastiat Group, Inc., and runs the popular Trading From Main Street. She can be reached at Toni@tradingfrommainstreet.com.