June 2006 Archives

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to an article earlier today that sums up my feelings about this market pretty well:

Here's this week's trading schedule as I see it: Monday -- nothing happened. Tuesday -- Nothing will happen. Wednesday -- nothing will happen. Thursday -- nothing will happen until 2:15, after which time I expect to see a sharp reaction to whatever the Fed says and does. If the reaction to the Fed is positive, I would also expect to see strong follow-though on Friday as institutions try and make their 1st half numbers look as good as possible. I would expect this good feeling may last a few days with the July 4th holiday next week. I would also expect a rally of this type may suck enough people in and fool enough participants that it could lead to the next leg down.

I heard many traders remark lately that they have been forced to the sidelines. Being out of the market makes some traders antsy since they are afraid of missing something should the market move. Traders whose strategies have them largely on the sideline should understand that cash IS a position. Over the last couple of years this asset has appreciated greatly in value. Short-term interest rates are now closer to 5% than 1% and likely to get upped a little more later this week. It always pays to be patient when trading, and these days it pays a little more. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.

One area in which the bears clearly have the upper hand is the semis, which got crushed today and closed at a new 8-month low. But I still wouldn't be too aggressive in that sector ahead of the Fed meeting...

Since all the indices closed under their 10-day moving averages I've switched the short-term trends to 'down'. They could easily be 'lateral', depending on how you look at it since the indices are still range-bound.

Looks like a flat open today. Let's see if we can break out of the recent trading range. I'm not holding my breath though...

Potential swing trades:

Here's another chart for Jerry:

PCU might of broken the downtrend and is getting interesting here. I am wondering if all that PD money is flowing into PCU.

I don't know if the PD money is flowing into PCU but PCU does look good right now...

I was asked do a chart of GM which was on fire today on news of a potential alliance with Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (NSANY) and Renault SA (EPA:RNO). Here's the chart:

Given all that could have happened today with it being quarter-end and the Russell rebalancing its indices things were rather quiet. Although volume increased on many indices I think that was all due to the rebalancings. The Russell 2000 had a nice 1.45% gain today thanks to that rebalancing, even if all the gains came in the last 15 minutes of the session.

So the indices, excluding the Russell, were little changed today. Monday is one of those stoopid half-day sessions so I don't expect much to happen then either. I'll get back to trading and posting watchlists on Wednesday. Enjoy the break and the holiday.

No changes today

If there was ever a day to maintain your discipline today would be it. I think we could see some nutty moves today due to a few things. First, it's quarter-end so expect the typical mark-up (and down?) games by the fund managers. Second, it's the last full day of trading before Independence Day so I expect a good number of people to be reducing exposure. That could be bullish or bearish depending on which side is most worried. And last but certainly not least is the Russell rebalancing. Should be an interesting day.

Potential swing trades:

The indices, with the notable exception of the NDX / QQQQ, finally broke out of their recent trading ranges. It was nice to finally get a post-Fed reaction that wasn't full of violent reversals. Today's move seems to send a very clear signal:

Then again, if I remember correctly, the early January rally happened for the exact same reason as today's rally -- the market thought the Fed was close to being finished raising rates. Anyway, it was a very strong day today. The internals were very bullish, even before the Fed decision and we had percentage gains not seen in a long time. I think CNBC said that this was the largest percentage gain on the Dow since 2003. Despite today's impressive gains most of the indices are still in intermediate-term downtrends (under their 50-day moving averages) so I wouldn't sound the all-clear just yet.

Weezee asked me if I thought that I wondering if today's up day is just leading to a temporary rally as a result of the pre-holiday effect? I really don't know but it's hard not to believe that most of today's move was simply a reaction to the Fed. I can certainly see short-covering ahead of the holiday contributing to the gains. My guess is that whatever happens after the holiday will largely be driven by earnings and earnings warnings.

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

Brian at Alpha Trends has been providing daily videos of his technical analysis of the market. He does a great job of covering the markets in under 10 minutes. Here's what he had to say yesterday:

There are more market-related videos on YouTube tagged as 'daytrading', 'forex', etc. Unfortunately the more obvious tags like 'stocks', 'options, and 'trading' bring up a lot of non-market related videos as well. But searches on multiple keywords (tags) seems to have good results -- like this 'stocks trading' search.

Note: Once again there will be no watchlist tomorrow since I'm taking the day off for the Fed decision.

Second note: Apparently the July issue of TASC Magazine is on newsstands now. In addition to my interview there's a review of Barry's blog in the issue.

The indices continued their range-bound ways today. I think it's almost a certainty that these trading ranges will be broken either Thursday or Friday due to whatever the Federal reserve Board has to say. What I don't know is whether the break will be to the upside or the downside. The path of least resistance is down but the market's still oversold based on measures like T2108 (23.95 today) and $SPXA50R. It would be silly to focus on the technicals right now anyway -- what the Fed says & does is what's going to move the market over the next couple of days. Brace yourselves...

Charts of the indices and the trend table are below:

I thought I'd answer these questions on the site since I get asked some of these often...

Mike, if there is a better method for me to ask you these questions, please let me know. You may choose not to answer any or all of them or not reply to this email at all. That would be fine with me. I understand that some questions may be personal and that you are too busy to read every piece of email you receive. But, here goes:

This method is fine. I guess I need to make a master article that can point people to a lot of these answers, many of which are 'buried' in the archives.

Note: I have a meeting tomorrow morning so there probably won't be a watchlist.

The action today was a little bit better if you were willing to go short. The indices fell to the bottom of their recent trading ranges on a slight increase in volume. So the bears win this round of the tug-of-war but I don't think they should get too excited yet. I have a feeling that today was nothing but a buyer's strike ahead of the Fed meeting. I linked to