Monday, November 23, 2009

It's Kinda Complicated; I Guess.....

It was quite a confusing day of action. Sentiment went from red hot at the open to moribund as the day progressed. Almost everything ended up well off intraday highs other than a few big-cap names like AAPL and AMZN. The weak dollar was the primary catalyst for the opening strength, but as it strengthened throughout the day, oil, gold and other commodity stocks pulled back sharply from their opening levels.

Overall, it was still a very positive day with plenty of green on the screens, but it was troubling how we lost momentum after the housing numbers and didn't really see the buyers give it another good go.

Technically, the S&P500, Russell 2000 and Nasdaq-100 all were turned back at or near significant overhead levels. The DJIA had a little better relative strength, but it was turned back as well.

It certainly wasn't a negative day, but the inability to gain any traction after the very hot open is of concern. The bulls used up a lot of energy, and it is going to be tougher to deliver that sort of action again, especially as volume slows down and folks figure that they might as well lock in the day's gains and go enjoy the holiday.

I think traders will be actively looking for some pockets of momentum in the next couple days, so there should be some interesting action to trade, but the screwy behavior today has complicated things a bit. We still have positives to work with, but the setup isn't as good as it was......

long AAPL

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