Everything that was instrumental for stocks Friday disappeared as stocks went for sale once again.  No follow through was possible as every major weekend newspaper talked of ‘double dip“ focusing on FED being out of bullets post Bernanke address, Japan’s actions reversed the TSY trade, INTC/tech trade reversed bounce (SOX off 2.5%), miners couldn’t continue snapback as volume hit lowest levels of the year.  It’s quite discouraging to conclude August/summer in this fashion as the bottom of range is likely to be in focus again.  Still, we just might be in ‘holiday' trading mode til post- Labor day before anything is determined.

We highlighted the need to follow through to get past the “R” cited here as 1065 and none of the ingredients for such were present and now Friday‘s move looks like nothing more than…..“If not, today will only be classified by next week as a ‘short covering‘ and those taking a rental out on the market for 2-3 days”.   Unfortunately, the rally didn’t even last 2-3 days,  but a single day!.  Tomorrow,  the FOMC minutes will be highly anticipated as there are still questions around that August 10th meeting and we’ve talked about have China PMI out Tuesday night, US PMI's, plus NFP coming later in the week for the market to deal with.    Today’s action was probably in part investors taking advantage of the bump Friday to take profits and avoid standing ahead of all these events/ critical macro data.