Tuesday, December 30, 2008

A Traditional Holiday, Monthly, Quarterly And Year-End Mark-Up Day

We finally had a little more typical holiday type trading today. It was still quite choppy and you can tell that confidence levels are quite low, but breadth was good all day and there was some obvious window-dressing type action. We had another crazy spike in the final hour of trading, but at least there wasn't a huge whipsaw.

After the year we've had, traders are not feeling a high level of trust. They are being opportunistic especially when it comes to these final hour games, but at least the bias was positive today.

After the close, I'm seeing some big blocks cross the tape. General Electric, for example, has a 4.4 million share block crossing at 15.82. That is to be expected this time of the year but can cause some unexpected moves.

Tomorrow we are likely to see some more of the same, but typically a lot of the big window dressing and year-end adjustments are done before the last day so it's not too blatant. Don't expect too much logic and you'll be fine.

No comments: