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March 17, 2008 Stock Market Recap

Note: I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning so there won’t be a watchlist tomorrow. Look for post-Fed charts tomorrow evening.

Given how much angst there was over the Bear Stearns fallout I think the bulls have to be happy with how little damage was done to the indices today. The S&P managed to close above that important 1270 level. But, like I said yesterday, we’re still left very close to that critical technical level with the reaction to the Fed decision likely to make or break that 1270 support.

Despite all the focus on financials today the Nasdaq, which isn’t financial-laden, got hit worse than the S&P. A look under the covers of the Nasdaq-100 shows where the selling took place: FMCN (Chinese advertising) - 27%, APOL -10%, FWLT (Construction in the energy space) -10%, BIDU -8%, UAUA -8%, GENZ & VRTX (bio-wrecks) -5%, ADBE -5.6%, GOOG -4%…

The action in many commodities was toppy today as well. DBA, which is composed of Corn, Wheat, Soybeans and Sugar is working on a double top. It just needs to close beneath the March 10th low, which is 31 cents away, to confirm a double top. Note the bearish divergences in On-Balance Volume and stochastic:

And oil broke its 6-week uptrend today:

Trend Table

no changes

Trend Nasdaq S&P 500 Russell 2000
Primary Down Down Down
Intermediate Down Down Down
Short-term Down Down Down

(+) Indicates an upward reclassification today
(-) Indicates a downward reclassification today
Lat Indicates a Lateral trend

*** I’m simply using the indices’ relations to their 200, 50 and 10-day moving averages to tell me the long, intermediate and short-term trends, respectively.

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  1. 2 Comment(s)

  2. By Jason Coleman on Mar 18, 2008 | Reply

    Mike, can you give a quick refresher in what securities you typically trade? Have you been trading commodities (futures or ETFs) lately?

    Thanks, bud. ‘hope all is well with you.

  3. By Michael on Mar 18, 2008 | Reply

    Jason,

    I just trade individual stocks and a rare ETF. Whatever is moving with volume and shows up on my scanner on any given day is fair game.

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