Sloppy day!

That is the only way to describe today’s trade…Sloppy!.    Considering trading is a lot about preparation, our premkt lead was the global hints of stabilization in eco’ data posted may carry through to here.   Fortunately,  U.S data was good enough (guess you could see bright spots if you look hard enough) to lift us over the important level of the 50ma at 791SPX early on.      Still,  this seemed like slop trading as the market here was lagging the overnight markets and the FTSE  which was climbing and over 4% near close while we limped along.    We thought this divergence had a reason to narrow and posted we could see our indices climb after the London close.    Well,  the indices did come from the shadows with the SPX climbing nearly 15pts to highs of the day (810 up 3%) in the next few hours,  but the ‘scattered’ action we alluded to in the morning really had continued into 3pm.    Something was array,  today had a feeling of late summer trading.   The biggest problem was despite the $USD getting whacked,  the commodity linked equities were not participating on a lower $USD.     Again, a divergence in an unusual trading day and so the last hour sell off was not that big of a surprise as there were many missing links.    There was no real buying as in conviction to get to 3% gain on the SPX,  this type of activity usually ends bad as in gains being pared by close or overnight.    Only the financials really performed,  but that just looked like more short covering in the works.      We’ll probably see an early continuation down tomorrow with the 50ma an important level to hold by tomorrow’s close.    Also,  did you see the Super-Caps ….MSFT up 6%,  what’s that all about???…Who cares!!...Simply,  things didn’t make sense today and the volatility we prepped to start the week came and we closed back down to SPX 797. 

Sec’s/ Stocks closely followed in brief…

Shippers , ..."AMC,   TBSI  announced a pretty decent report and stock is jumping up in AH trading.   We'd again look for GNK as a sympathy trade in the early morning if this AMC sentiment holds."   In the premkt,  you could see this was not going to materialize as only TBSI was gapping (not the usual action when these can potentially run during day).   Still, being prepped is key, at least you are there if a trading opp’ occurs.     What we got instead was another broken down sector (Solars ) getting a lift of a Jefferies note on CSIQ.    This lifted all the cheapie solars,  we loved and traded hard in the past, CSIQ, JASO, LDK.  We’ll take it, but STP  was already in the process of making a nice pattern  (see chart and caution comments midday ) and exploded from it nicely.    We would have preferred to let it ride by itself, but it seems many firms are willing to take this sector for a ride into earnings.    You could see this by the endless notes in Briefing.com to remind readers of past runs into earnings.    Again,  the trading environment is for traders,  if you accumulated STP in the $10’s, 11’s in the past few days take your gift in the mid $12’s.   That’s 10-20% in a few days and truly a gift when stocks pop 15-20% on a lousy upgrade.     Another stock mentioned constantly the past week was MYGN  and it hit new highs early.   The worst part of this late decline is it took down one of the few outperformers the last few days with it. 

USDA prelim #'s did not attract any interest for the Ag’s- chem’s ,  the sector just rode the tide of the lagging commodity equities.     This also was a divergence as the price of grains were propelled by the planting review.    We think this muted reaction may change soon, but energy links are acting terrible and need to pick up to help out.

We’ll watch for eco’ catalysts tomorrow (ISM etc.),  hopefully the G20 doesn’t cause a lockdown on the markets as the city of London is already experiencing.