Late Day Selling Throws a Dent in Day’s Gains

Good housing data fails to spark buyers, but stocks end in the green.

An unfortunate reversal at the end of the day leaves a sour taste in the mouths of traders. A better than expected existing home sales figures did give a temporary boost to prices, but it quickly faded as the market began its mid-day weakness. Volume ran higher on the NYSE all day long, but it wasn’t until the afternoon until the NASDAQ’s volume began to outpace Friday’s levels. The last thirty minutes of the trading session saw sellers dominate trading. Many leading stocks held up nicely, but a few did follow the general market. We did not see any major reversals from leading stocks as many remain very healthy. Not a great day, but our uptrend remains.



Over the weekend the G20 meetings did have a few notable headlines. In the grand scheme of things we only care about leading stocks and the price and volume action of the market leaders. If we were to pay attention to the noise coming from news outlets would only cloud our judgment and ruin our returns. It is very difficult to guess how the market will react to a certain situation, but if we focus solely on the market action and leaders we can avoid costly mistakes. We see too often traders try and “trade” news headlines and guess a new trend. It simply isn’t a wise move in this game.

We did see the 2480 level taken out, a level I had spoken about last week. Friday we saw sellers keep the NASDAQ from breaking this level even with a few leaders breakout out or getting support at major moving averages. Now the market is receiving headwinds at the 2500 level and this market will need to be able to break above and hold. And of course we’ll be watching April highs as the market approaches those levels.

Right now the NASDAQ has two days worth of distribution with a quasi stall day. Today can be classified as a stall day because volume was higher than Friday, but it was below the 50dma. The caveat is volume coming below average, but be aware if this market does flash another stall day or heavy distribution.

Tomorrow we’ll get another round of housing data from Case-Shiller and a reading from the Richmond Fed regarding manufacturing. However, more importantly tomorrow will be one week until the mid-term elections and continued talk about what it means to the market will continue. Do not pay attention to the noise, focus on the action of market leaders and the overall market!

Always cut your losses short!