The major indexes took four days to recover last Wednesday’s steep one-day losses, something that is not unusual for this Ugly Duckling market. One of the major factors that has enabled the market to maintain its paces has been the ability of certain groups to step up and provide support to the rally at critical points along the way. In many ways, this sort of rotational action is healthy and... [more]

This has been a wild week, but from my perspective as a swing-trader it was a good one. The trick was, of course, avoiding the big sell-off on Wednesday where many leading stocks were hit hard, and I mean hard. When this happens and you are long a stock experiencing this type of downside pressure, the urge to pull the rip cord and bail out becomes strongest right at the lows. Despite... [more]

Things became quite extended to the upside going into yesterday’s close as many of our favored long names have been jacking higher. But as is often the case in this market, just when things look about as good as they can get the market likes to pull the rug out on investors. That’s what happened this morning as the indexes gapped down at the open and just kept moving lower all day, save... [more]

The market looked like it was headed for a spin-out on Thursday as the Dow quickly broke 140 points to the downside early in the day. But as has been the case with intraday sell-offs over the past couple of weeks, the indexes rallied to recover most of their losses by the close. In the midst of all the intraday gyrations, the NASDAQ Composite Index remains in what can only... [more]