Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Korea And Ireland (And Spain.....)

We had our third weak open in a row, but this time the dip buyers were not able to turn us back up like they did so well on Friday and Monday. We had three failed bounce attempts intraday and ended up closing in the lower end of the trading range. The bulls just couldn't regain their traction, and that's not too surprising given how much buying power they have expended on the recent bounces.

Breadth was 4 to 1 negative. Today's volume wasn't heavy, though it did tick up over yesterday's, and that means that it was a technical "distribution" day. Gold was a safe haven, but it was about the only sector that managed to stay positive. Retailers started off strong and some stocks on the group were acting well, but it wasn't nearly enough to turn the tide of selling. Banks were the biggest problem spot.

What really added to the pain today were those red-hot pockets of momentum lately we've been seeing lately. These momentum chasers found themselves trapped today, and the dip buyers never bailed them out. A few of the key names such as CRM, CSTR, NFLX and RVBD did come back fairly well, but others such as AAPL and GOOG couldn't put together much of a recovery.

Technically, the market saw a failed attempt at a bounce, and the S&P 500 is back to support around the 50-day simple moving average in the 1175 to 1180 range. We are a little oversold and we have the holiday spirit around Thanksgiving to help the bulls if they can perk up again.

The big picture isn't particularly attractive now with the failure at 1200 and the news flow has certainly become rather grim, but I expect to see a better effort to bounce back tomorrow and/or during the half day session on Friday.

long NFLX

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