Quiet, Mixed Consolidation Day

The stock market indices had a very mixed, sloppy session, and finished the day on a sour note, with the S&P 500 unchanged today. The day started out with a move down, a very strong rally in the morning ensured, reaching a new all-time high on the 5050 Nasdaq 100. The S&P 500 couldn’t get back to Friday’s double-top high at 22.82, reaching 2279 today, and then rolled over to 2269. The Dow closed down, the S&P 500 closed flat, while the Nasdaq 100 closed slightly in the plus column.

Net on the day, the Dow was down 32.16 at 19,855.22, 100 points off the high. The S&P 500 was up .01 at 2268.91, 11 points off the high and 4 points off the low. The Nasdaq 100 was up 10.27 at 5035.17, 14 points off the high.

Advance-declines were 18 to 11 positive on the New York Stock Exchange, and 9 to 5 positive the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 4 to 3 positive on New York, total volume of 3.5 billion shares traded. The Nasdaq traded 1.7 billion shares and had a 10 to 7 positive volume ratio.

TheTechTrader.com board was mixed. Priceline.com (PCLN) was up 5.61 to 1535.25, Apple Inc. (AAPL) up 12 cents 119.11, but Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) dropped 1.86 to 804.79, Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) gave back 1.02 to 795.90, and Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) closed down 1.06 to 129.89.

Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) gained 3.15 to 180.31, Facebook, Inc. (FB) fell 55 cents to 124.35, and First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) closed negative by 18 cents to 33.39.

Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) lost 1.41 to 229.87.

Other stocks to the upside included CoLucid Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CLCD), up 1.55 to 35.00, Exelixis, Inc. (EXEL) up 1.33 to 18.91, U.S. Concrete, Inc. (USCR) 1.15 to 61.00, and United States Steel Corp. (X) 1.89 to 35.50.

On the downside, there were very fractional losers on our board today.

Checking TheTechTrader.com percent-gain leaderboard, Biocept, Inc. (BIOC) climbed 79 cents, or 77 1/2%, to 1.81, on 21.7 million shares traded.

ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Ltd. (IMUC), after announcing management changes, popped 2.02, or 93%, to 4.20, on 1.4 million shares traded. GenVec, Inc. (GNVC) gained 3.82, or 77%, to 8.79, on 17 million shares traded.

Signal Genetics, Inc. (SGNL), on merger talks, exploded 12.69, or 265%, to 17.48, on 1.2 million shares traded.

Small biotech stocks and thinly-traded stocks were flying high today, and that’s not a good sign for the market, in my opinion. That said, they had an incredible day today, and the list of biotech stocks that did well today is many.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, after opening lower, and rallying sharply in the morning, the indices backed off in the afternoon and closed lower on the Dow, flat on the S&P 500, and up a little on the Nasdaq 100.

It was a quiet, mixed session, and consolidation day, if nothing else.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Good Trading!