Coming around?..
Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 08:00AM After today's huge squeeee--ze, it goes to show that this market still can dish out some amazing gains, despite the terrible economic and financial circumstance. We have often said stability from the financial sector is not only crucial, but necessary for the market to stage any bounce/ rebound of any duration. We not only surged past the SPX 820 level, but we are looking to be on deck for the SPX 860 level. The action is fast and furious this week stemming from volatility..“Intraday swings are more likely to return in this environment…up and down’. (before last Thursdays trading day).
However, this volatility is still just fine for traders, sometimes even great, as we’ve all become more experienced as to how to deal with it after a crazy year, day after day of such. If a trader did not take advantage of today's wild gain, they're simply not prepared. Anticipation is half the battle. Here, at DJIM we only threw out the word ‘rally’ about 10 times yesterday, not calling for one, but being ready for one, which only matters ..lower buy range …banking selling shouldn’t last”….heading into the trading day, including, “ a relief rally (maybe imminent) occurs..”. As we’ve discussed, preparation is key to any success as a trader. We try to provide that with your pre- market journal.
Today's financial action looked particularly well, especially from the likes of JPM and GS. (led partly due to NTRS PNC vs, SST day before report). Sentiment reversed for a day. To avoid the speculative banks stocks (C,BAC etc.), you know these are two we favor to trade when we all see the sector moving. In after hour news, following BAC 3pm insider buy headline, JPM's CEO reportedly bought 500k worth of its stock at $22.95/shr.(11mln+). This is definitely encouraging and confidence boosting kind of news the market is looking for, for one thing it was abating "Nationalization talk", even though we’re not sure why JPM was thrown in so much with the dirty bath water (C,BAC) the day before. In addition, the back to back good reports from IBM and AAPL today are shifting investors' sentiment from overly pessimistic to "not as pessimistic" and taking focus away from negatives in the market place.
We are hardly out of the woods yet. But, it does feel like investors are looking for positive news catalyst to rally this market. Can you imagine if some positive action from the government comes out with regard to the financial companies? This is what we feel people are banking on today. Sure, prior to today it was all doom and fear. Perhaps today's sentiment is that it's just a matter of time before the good news hits the street. Can investors change their feeling just like that overnight? Well, what you see is what you get and we have to play by the market action.
Technically, it just feels that it's going to be tough to challenge November's low this early in the year. Honestly, we don't know how it's going to play out if it gets there at any point. The one thing we do know though is that as long as the financials hold their ground, this market has almost no chance of testing last year's SPX low. We are still near the bottom of the range as oppose to the middle or top as discussed yesterday. Right now, we'd like to see some consolidation of gains from today,especially from the market movers. Include some profit taking early tomorrow. We also don't mind some smaller plays getting a firmer footing, but usually they catch up as oppose to lead this market, this might be where the commodity equities show life.
For tomorrow, the best bet is for this market's heavy weight to stabilize and not display the wild gyrations we've seen the last few trading days. We are hoping today action is NOT just a one day wonder and we return to doom and fear tomorrow. Come on Obama and your team, it's time to give this market's some much needed magic healing. We also have some interesting reports to come out tomorrow including GOOG, MSFT and ESI (alert and a pre-run late into earnings), POT. It will be a busy day!