Thursday, May 28, 2009

Making Sense of the Current Stock Market


Here we see a compressed 60-minute chart of the S&P 500 e-mini (ES) futures. That market is itself compressing, as we've been seeing lower highs and higher lows for much of the month. That has kept us in a range bound mode across many of the S&P sectors. I notice that today we registered 835 new 20-day highs across the NYSE, NASDAQ, and ASE, against 474 lows. That's a far cry from the 2862 20-day highs and 224 lows recorded on May 4th.

Should we see new price highs among the large cap indexes in the days to come, there is a good likelihood that those highs will not be confirmed by commensurate strength among the individual stocks and sectors. Until we see evidence of broad market strength, I am treating the current price action as part of a larger topping process and leaning toward fading all moves as long as we remain in the range environment.
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