Monday, December 5, 2011

For the second straight day, we opened strong and finished weak. We had gains, but they all occurred overnight. The intraday action was poor, but breadth was still healthy at better than 3:1 positive due to gains at the open. Volume was light with little energy, few leaders and no outstanding momentum.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up more than 8.5% in the last six days. That is an extremely rare feat to move that much that quickly, but the lack of love for this market is striking. It was obvious that few were prepared for the first big pop, but after four big gap-up opens in six days we should be seeing strong emotions and bullish celebrations. There is very little frothiness outside of the action in the indices. The irony is that the dour sentiment is what's keeping conditions ripe for continued lopsided action.

What has really helped kill the mood is the hot money players are itchy for action but aren't holding inventory overnight, so they miss out. Very little happens intraday, which only raises frustrations. On the other hand, many are afraid to hold much overnight due to headline risk, especially as we have become more overbought. So every day we start with a bunch of underinvested bulls that need to buy.