A Dull Distribution Day...

It was an extremely dull day of trading. Since we were in the red and volume ticked up about 2% over yesterday's low levels, it qualifies as a "distribution day," a simple way some traders use to measure if bigger money is buying or selling. We have had quite a few distribution days in this market during its rallies, and they haven't mattered much, but when volume picks up on down days it doesn't inspire much confidence.

The problem the market had today was that the overanxious buying in the first half-hour of trading on Monday messed up the bullish setup that had developed last week when we churned for a few days and built a bit of a base. We used up at lot of our seasonal goodwill in that big gap up on Monday and now are struggling to gain further traction.

Tomorrow we will have very thin trading again, but it does have a history of being a positive day. We'll see if the traders can get some themes going, but they looked weary today and I'm not sure they are going to put forth the effort.....

I'm a bit taken back by Jim Cramer's (of realmoney.com; he writes that he can live with a trading tax, although not officially in favor of one....) view of a trader's tax. I think he is dead wrong on this. Such a tax will do nothing to create jobs and will destroy the industry of active trading. I'm not trying to be sensationalistic, but this tax could destroy the livelihood of many people. I plan on fighting this loudly and aggressively, and I hope many will join me....