Positive Session with Poor Technicals

The stock market indices were up marginally today, but the technicals were not good. The day started out with a gap up, bounced around early morning, stair-stepped its way down, rallied back up, pulled back, retested, an moved sideways the rest of the day to close in the positive column.

Net on the day, the Dow was up 37.87 at 20,090.29. The S&P 500 was up .52 at 2293.08. The Nasdaq 100 was up 17.91 at 5178.85, but reaching a new high at 5196.27.

Advance-declines were 250 issues lower on the New York Stock Exchange, and 500 issues lower on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 2 to 1 negative on New York, total volume of 3 billion shares traded. The Nasdaq traded 1 3/4 billion shares and had a 5 to 4 negative volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was nearly all green. Priceline.com (PCLN) was up 11.52 to 1598.70, Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) up 5.63 to 806.97, Apple Inc. (AAPL) up 1.24 to 131.53, Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) 4.86 o 812.50, and Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) 3.01 to 143.98.

Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) gained 36 cents to 178.17, Facebook, Inc. (FB) dropped 22 cents to 131.84, and First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) lost 34 cents to 31.79.

Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA), however, was down 29 cents to 357.48.

Other stocks to the upside included NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) up 1.82 to 119.13, Esperion Therapeutics, Inc. (ESPR), one of swing trades, made a spectacular move up 2.48 to 20.14, swing trade, and Achaogen, Inc. (AKAO), up 1.39 to 18.85,

On the downside, Clovis Oncology Inc (CLVS) lost another 1.04 to 60.00, after being as low as 58.61 earlier in the session. Noble Energy, Inc. (NBL) was down 1.06 to 38.80 as oil stocks came off today, and U.S. Concrete, Inc. (USCR) gave back 1.20 to 64.20.

Checking TheTechTrader.com percent-gain leaderboard, Concordia International Corp. (CXRX) ran 52 cents, or 17 1/2%, to 3.49, on 6.55 million shares traded.

Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. (EYES) had an amazing day, up 1.21, or 78%, to 2.76, on 8.9 million shares traded. MYOS RENS Technology Inc. (MYOS) bounced 1.11, or 31%, to 4.72, on nearly a million shares traded.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices gapped up, ran up sharply in the morning, pulled back midday, bounced around, formed big wedges, tried to rally, and only in the last 10 minutes did they manage to pop off the afternoon pullback lows.

Nevertheless, it was a positive day on lower technicals. Always suspect. We’re be watching carefully.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Good Trading!