The erratic trading continued most of the day as the market chewed on anything and everything. Included was the expected Bear Stearns debacle, the FDX earnings and the ORCL strong report and a few Eco numbers. Stir'em up and you get more of the same as far as the trading environment is concerned this week on lighter volume. This means early firm action, a loss of momentum mid day and then a modest rally late in the day. What you simply have is the financials finding a way to put a drag on the market and the half ass end of year rally the market wants. You can see this loud and clear as the NASD/RUT were making new highs for the week while the DJIA/SPX lagged behind...but this should change as the natural thing to do is play catch up and close the gap, especially since RIMM will lead the NASD pack early on. This could provide a better technical picture for the lagging indices come next week, even if the financials don't want to help out. The premise here the past week was the importance of earnings coming out and being a catalyst. This round of reports won't take us out of the cold in respect to the 'big picture' of where the market is going, but what it does is... give us all hope that is we will have something to look forward to in January as the official earnings season kicks off. The reason is RIMM showed something we haven't seen in ages and that is a post earnings run, herd reaction and not the usual sell off. Unfortunately, the report falls on quad witching Friday to cloud the picture. Throw in the holiday trading aspect this Friday and we won't get a true feel for where RIMM is going just yet...up or down from today's action. If you didn't flip it around AH's yesterday or are looking to sell early today, we'd then take a cautious stance today at this $120+ price. This also holds true for other stocks as well, we are unlikely to chase new plays today unless a whole sector, such as the Solars want to take the lead. No Rush today, let's see how it all materializes later in the day. In the meantime, we'll continue to trade and watch for further setups from what we have concentrated this week on and that is the WBD LRN VIP MBT etc.
Let's hope the ORCL/RIMM reports start to get the talking heads in pre-earnings mode and have some attention turn away from the subprime mess and on to earnings. This mess ain't going away for years and we need to move on.