Summary
This is certainly a tricky stock market, one that refuses to show its hand. Of course, trend changes (if that is what is happening) often fool the masses. The S&P 500 (SPX), S&P 100 (OEX), Dow Jones Industrials, and the NYSE Composite have now gone in different directions from the prior day for six straight days. If we had the historical data, we’d guess it would show that such a pattern is very rare. To make things even odder, both the SPX and the OEX actually have been in a short-term uptrend during the six-day period. Monday’s losses were very mild, on a range of -0.1% to -0.4%. So far, earnings reports has been good to very good, especially for the mega-cap Information Technology names. However, a number of IT giants that beat estimates have given some, if not all, of their price gains back after initial one-day pops. That is not unexpected and is something we talked about going into earnings season, as these behemoths (and many other stocks) have seen large advances since the April bottom. Indeed, expectations were high and, despite the beats, stellar earnings results in many cases were not “good enough.” Focusing on the Nasdaq 100, the largest gainers on Monday primarily were stocks with weak technical rankings. Other
