Your Personal Trader - DJIM Journal 2011

As if this gong show wasn’t turbulent enough intraday, after hours, the theatrics continued with a Moody’s threat. In reality, what the market seems to be dictating is it needs to go lower in order to pressure the debt ceiling issue into a resolution. This threat seemingly did the trick in part as ES dropped to ~1300 AMC. Unfortunately, this is an overreaction because this review has been telegraphed for weeks if no progress and so cooler heads should prevail. Headlines keep on driving market direction by the hour, hence, keeping the fast traders/ES/ETF game intact.

As far as the trading day, DJIM weekend editions are always a lead into the trading week and the latest made no mention Bernanke “3” appearances, including FOMC minutes because it wasn’t viewed as a potential market catalyst. Earnings were/ are the pivotal market events to monitor along with European faults. Bernanke/Q3 hype was not in the script and it avoided being caught in a great fade job this afternoon. Lets use some street smarts, if Europe is imploding, Washington is a circus and earnings are a concern (from major cyclical/tech)…how could a hint offer of the’ Bernanke put’ rally this market?. It is not this markets wish to get it out of the bunkers at the moment.

Earnings continued to disappoint with ASML ~.5% and ADTN -10%. You can’t tell by the individual losses, but ASML report/call was actually worse. Takeaway here is the semi’s expect to disappoint now and so a ‘trough’ theme might be developing for this sub group.