A perfect storm of bad news today left all sectors down except for gold, oil & gas. The indices didn’t even wait for the oil inventory report or the Beige Book to break yesterday’s lows. Each of those reports just gave sellers more reason to sell. You know things are bad when you see many indices closing below their lower Bollinger Bands. As you’ll see that happened today.

The transports and airlines were some of the worst performers today. It’s been about three weeks since I was asked about the transports and posted this chart:

I wrote back then that I thought it was too soon to draw any conclusions. I noted that its 50-day moving average and January uptrend were still intact. Well that changed today and I have no problem now declaring that the transports are broken — at least in the short-to intermediate term. It’s still above its 200-day moving average so I expect long-term investors/traders to try to support it near that average. Here’s an updated chart:

Financials have led the way down and they’re now threatening to break the 2008 low:

The Nasdaq gave up its 50-day moving average and confirmed a double-top today.

I’ve pointed out the same potential support areas for the S&P 500 that I mentioned over the weekend. But like one of my favorite trading rules states “bear markets have no supports” and I’d be more focused on finding resistance in order to short it whenever it bounces.

The Russell’s getting dragged down by the rest of the market.

The Dow continues to head toward a retest of the 2008 lows.

Trend Table

Once again everything’s down

Trend Nasdaq S&P 500 Russell 2000
Long-Term 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.