Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Claims Tomorrow

The bulls did a nice job today of adding some small gains to yesterday's spike.

Once again, the volume was around the lightest of the year and we closed a bit weak but, after the poor start this morning, breadth turned positive and we had some leadership from retailers. It was the recovery in TGT, after a gap-down on its earnings report, that really helped out today.

Technically the Nasdaq still hasn't been able to make it through the 50-day simple moving average at 2,229 and the S&P500 sputtered out at 1,100 again. Although we do have positive action, it just isn't very vigorous, and market players seem to be happy keeping some of their powder dry.

It isn't bad action at all but, with volume so low and plenty of technical hurdles to the upside, it isn't an environment where the technical-trader yahoos can feel comfortable with aggressive buying. There is a very good chance we'll roll back over, especially if the indices don't cut through the technical overhead with some conviction in the next day or so.

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