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Technical Trader Closing Brief

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Indices Unable to Hold Snapback Rally Gains

Thu, Oct 9 2008, 07:40 GMT
by Harry Boxer

The Technical Trader

The markets had an extremely volatile session today with wild and wide swings both ways.

The day started out with a move lower and sharply from the get-go as pre-market futures were sharply lower. At that point the Nasdaq 100 dipped under 1300 to 1296, and the S&P 500 got down to just under 971. They had a very sharp snapback rally, taking the NDX from 1296 to 1378, a more than 80-point rally in about 35-40 minutes. At the same time the S&P went from 970 to 1020, nearly 50 points. They had a retracement pullback, with the indices bouncing mid-day through that, and then went lower in a 3-wave decline, retesting the lows and holding them . Then came on even stronger to make new session highs on the Nasdaq 100 but failed to do so on the S&P 500. They pulled back to initial intraday support, held it and then came on again just beneath those highs, but could not punch through for a third time. When that occurred, the indices rolled over sharply and took a big chunk off the day's results, reversing the Dow from positive to very negative territory.

Net on the day the Dow was down 189 points and 375 off the high. The S&P 500 was down 11.29 to just under 985. That was about 36 points off its high, so the late afternoon reversal was a very sharply negative one. The Nasdaq 100 just barely edged into the plus column, up 0.63, but was 56 points off its session highs just 1 1/2 hours before that. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) was down 1.79 today to 256.

Advance-declines were decidedly negative by 24 1/2 to 7 1/2 on New York and 21 1/2 to about 8 1/2 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 2 to 1 negative on New York on heavy total volume of more than 2.1 billion. Nasdaq traded a whopping 3.4 billion-plus and had a ratio of about 2 to 1 negative on advancing over declining volume.

So a disappointing end to what looked like a promising rally, and perhaps another test is in store tomorrow morning.

TheTechTrader.com board was very mixed as a result of all the wild swings back and forth, but the SDS was still up 4.90 on the day at 97.21, and the QID at 77 to 1.14. It had a high of 80 at one point and a low of 69.35.

The leading gainer on my board today other than that was portfolio position Mosaic (MOS), which managed to close up 1.84 to 35.75, but with a half hour to go was about 3 1/2 points higher. Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) had a beautiful reversal to the upside from 38.80 to 46.87, a nearly 8-point reversal, but only to give it all up and then some in the last 40 minutes, dropping down 10 points off its high, closing down 3.27 on the day on 5 million shares.

Other gainers of note, Sigma Designs (SIGM) was up 42 cents and United (UAUA) up 38 cents. Canadian Solar (CSIQ) was up 85 cents and Cree Inc. (CREE) up 88 cents. CLNE was up 62 cents, and AAPL 63 cents. But all of those stocks, particularly the larger-cap ones like Apple, were substantially higher earlier in the session.

So, again, a very disappointing day indeed, starting out very negative and then reversing sharply higher, but not able to hold the gains. Tomorrow, I'll be watching the lows around the 1296 to 1302 zone on the Nasdaq 100 and the 971-73 zone on the S&P 500.

Published on  Thu, Oct 9 2008, 07:41 GMT