April 5, 2020

The major market indexes rolled lower on Friday to finish out a down week. All the Big Three major market indexes closed just under their 10-day moving averages, as the daily chart of the NASDAQ Composite Index illustrates. Intraday volatility remains high as the indexes all correlate closely and remain in a roughly three-week bear flag following an initial and brutal leg down off... Read More

April 1, 2020

The bear market rally off the lows of nearly two weeks ago ran into some April Fool’s Day selling today. The NASDAQ Composite Index, like the S&P 500 and the Dow, finally peeled away from its 20-dema to the downside as selling volume picked up yesterday. Today a gap-down open carried the index below its 10-dma on lighter volume.   ... Read More

March 29, 2020

Technically, the indexes are still holding up in an oversold rally, but intraday volatility remains high. In my view, the fat part of the shorting game that began in late February has come and gone. We are therefore left in an environment where nimble swing traders and day traders are left trying to play the volatility if they can. As the daily chart of the NASDAQ Composite Index... Read More

March 25, 2020

The market remains within the confines of a bear trend but is currently attempting its first real oversold rally since beginning its record-breaking crash in late February. I blogged Monday afternoon that I was starting to see some evidence of a potential reaction move off the lows, but I still didn’t view this as anything more than a bear market rally. So far, the real-time evidence favors this... Read More

March 22, 2020

The Crash of 2020 persists, as the NASDAQ Composite Index has done little more than form a short bear flag over the past week against a daily backdrop of tremendous intraday volatility. In the meantime, all we have seen so far are brief, oversold rallies, otherwise known as one-day wonder rallies. Some might prefer to use the phrase dead cat bounces (DCBs, for short).   ... Read More

March 18, 2020

The market’s downtrend has gained more velocity as the action becomes more volatile and furious this week. The indexes gapped to lower lows on Monday, with the Dow posting its worst single-day decline since Black Monday in 1987. It sliced through its December 2018 low on the largest downside point move in its history. Meanwhile, circuit-breakers have been getting triggered... Read More

March 15, 2020

Forced selling of epic proportions plagued the market all week long, which has hardly been able to muster any kind of sustainable reaction rally as it has continued to plumb lower lows. Things are so far down at this point that it becomes more useful to look at weekly charts in order to figure out where we are and where we may go from here, at least in the short term. We did end the week... Read More

March 11, 2020

The market has been reduced to a surreal game of “guess the gap” where huge overnight futures moves are the order of the day. After the NASDAQ Composite Index found support at its 200-dma on Friday while sentiment indicators spiked to extreme fear levels, it looked like we might be headed for an oversold bounce to start the week off.   ... Read More

March 8, 2020

Market mayhem remained the order of the day as the NASDAQ Composite Index and the rest of the market indexes, major or minor, broke hard to the downside at Friday’s open. The NASDAQ retested its 200-day moving average, where it held early in the day and then rallied late in the day for a show of supporting action at the line on higher volume. Things look quite ugly, to... Read More

March 4, 2020

A big telephone conference between G-7 nations regarding potential stimulus in the face of a spreading COVID-19 produced nothing yesterday morning, and the market began selling off in response. But the Fed decided to take matters into its own hands and cut interest rates by 50 basis points. That led to an immediate knee-jerk rally that almost instantaneously ran into a massive wall of selling,... Read More