Where's the beef?

Once again, the combination of "renewed" hope in financial stocks and decline of crude price, a fatter dollar sparked a feverish gain on the indices.   The pattern doesn't get old, but the market pariticipants may wish for broader action.   Yes, the performance was heavily concentrated in the financial stocks after a 3 day beating and there's no doubt it's masking all of the underlying concerns from this market.

Some may call a day like today BS and we have to actually agree on that.    For those that are looking to position trade, as oppose to intraday flipping, are pretty much in the "vacation camp".   There's simply hardly any opportunity to carry a position overnight without exposing yourself to high degree of risk.    Basically, most of the plays and setups would finish their few days worth of gain in one day.   It means that you either get in early in the day and hope your play gets you that magical move later on that day or you simply don't play at all.     Maybe this is just summer trading, or maybe the kind of uncertainty this market casts is preventing anyone from seeing things beyond 4 p.m.    In any case, this isn't healthy.

On the earnings report front, we had some nice reaction to the likes of X, WLT.    The logic is simple, if you beat the estimate by an incredible amount,   you may have something to look forward to.   All the earnings were great from X to WLT to MOS, the tricky part is which of these 3 industries will get the most love.    What we look for is hopefully the reports, conference calls from these companies can provide some sort of launch pad for their stocks and perhaps their related industry after all is digested.     It's unlikely that any of these stocks can challenge their recent high any time soon, but all we ask for at this point, is to renew some trading confidence back into these sectors.  In the days ahead,  we expect all these companies, including CF to have their forward estimates raised by firms on the heels of these earnings.  Yesterday, we said a catalyst is needed to go in tow with these earnings to hitch a ride.  This could be firms coming out with raises and shifting the sentiment back into these stocks/ groups.

Later in the week, we have the all important job report that will shed some more light on the current status of the economy.   Again, market will most likely move in extreme direction if the report tilts one way or the other.     For now, we simply wait for a major trend to develop.