Thursday, March 5, 2009

Extreme Selling

And it was yet another dismal day for the market. The minor bounce yesterday turned into an ugly trap for the bulls. We were pounded today with the banks, particularly JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America leading the way.

Breadth was horrible with better than 12 decliners for every gainer on the NYSE. Gold and bonds led to the upside while everything else was demolished.

The good news is that this selling is extreme and we even had some guy on CNBC saying how the low-risk trade is to go short. We have the jobs report in the morning and you really have to wonder if the market hasn't already priced in a terrible report. Is there someone who doesn't already expect a huge loss in jobs?

We will have some sort of bounce eventually, but, as has been abundantly clear recently, trying to time it with any sort of precision is a good way to get smacked.

What is really surprising about this action has been the complete inability of the market to find any good news. Typically a market as stretched to the downside as this one will eventually find some news to use as an excuse for a bounce. We have had nothing and there doesn't seem to be anything on the horizon, like a solution for the banks.

We are going to have a very interesting day tomorrow following the employment report.

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