Today seemed strange to me. I guess the pre-market skittishness over what the Fed was or was not going to do should have been a clue. It felt like more of a a buyers’ strike than a bear rampage. Although the indices closed on their lows and took out yesterday’s lows volume contracted and the VIX didn’t spike as high as it did yesterday. One thing was clear though, financials stunk up the joint today. The only worse performing sector was airlines. The BKX has shown great relative strength of late (thanks to the short-selling ban?) but it’s starting to slip now.

Here’s the VIX:

T2108 has slipped even more and now sits at 2.33

Here are the index charts which each broke yesterday’s low:

Trend Table

No changes

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.