Monday, January 23, 2012

There's no shortage of reasons why this market should pull back a little, but the bulls remain extremely stubborn. We had a sharp intraday reversal after early strength, but the dip-buyers provided support once again and kept the indices almost exactly flat.

Breadth was positive and strength in financials, precious metals, steel and coal kept the buyers busy, but oil stumbled and technology names were mixed. AAPL helped to cover up some weakness as anticipation for its earnings tomorrow night grew.

The market has substantial technical challenges and the arguments in favor of some sort of pullback continues to grow, but if there is one thing we've learned, the market can be extremely sticky to the upside even when it is obviously extended.

We have a slew of earnings reports hitting the rest of the week and I'm still concerned that the setup for some "sell the news" action is quite high. So far, we have avoided any major profit-taking or a rush to the exits, but there were quite a few reversals today in some stocks that have been squeezing higher, such as SHLD, SBUX and AMZN.