The Dow keeps the Streak alive at 8 Days

Another late afternoon lift helps send the Dow into positive territory to end the day’s trading session. Just after 2 pm stocks sat near the lows of the session, but buyers stepped up keeping the market from pushing lower. Volume ended higher on the day, but the early high run rate fell as the market moved higher. At this point volume hasn’t mattered to this market whatsoever. However, it does provide a nice talking point. Not too many standouts on the day, but AAPL resumed its march lower as the stock continues to remain in no man’s land. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ did notch technical distribution days. Despite the distribution the support at the lows we aren’t going to be a lot of weight on the day. We remain in our uptrend and until we see distribution pile up we’ll change our approach. Two leading stocks who had tough days were SLCA and EVER. Both stocks had been moving quite nicely but a secondary offering and downgrade both stocks find themselves under pressure. SLCA issued a secondary offering, but the stock found support. Like SLCA EVER was downgraded and it too found support by the close. This type of action will shake a lot of people out of positions especially without a game plan. If you have defined positions size, entries, and exits you will not be so easily shaken out of positions. Tomorrow’s advance retail sales will be the talk of the financial media tomorrow morning. The question they will try to answer is whether or not the Payroll Tax hike had any effect on consumer spending. I would expect it would not greatly move it one way or another just yet. We can sit here and waste time trying to figure out if the consumer was hurt or not. We are in an uptrend and price is much more important to us rather than guessing. Stay disciplined and always cut those losses short.

Dow and S&P 500 End Higher for the Fourth Consecutive Day

A positive reading from the ADP employment survey helped fuel stocks early pushing the Dow further into all-time high territory. BAC helped push the Dow as the stock aims to hit new highs on strong volume. By mid-day the markets were off their highs awaiting the Federal Reserve’s Beige book. The Federal Reserve noted growth in the economy due to gains in housing. Initially pushing stocks off their lows it appeared the Beige Book would send the stocks into new highs on the day. The rally would stall out just after 3pm. A late day small push off the lows by the bulls kept the major indexes from closing on their lows. It was good to see the market avoid distribution just after hitting new highs. GOOG and AAPL were drags on the NASDAQ today. AAPL continues to act poorly while GOOG pulls back after two big sessions. Both companies are fighting over the smart phone universe and both stocks are heading in different directions. A key point in both stocks is their relative strength. Focus on stocks with high relative strength and in the case of GOOG and AAPL is demonstrates the importance of relative strength. A few IPOs continue to act well. Our Platinum members were alerted to EOPN Monday morning to its potential. When IPOs act well you can bet the market is healthy. We’d love to see stocks like EOPN and EVER continue their moves higher. There is a lot of chatter about how far this market rally can go. Does it really matter where it ends when you focus on your exits? Sure, we’d love for this uptrend to never end and we go up every day. However, we know this is simply will not occur. No one knows how far or how long this will last. Therefore, we must have exits we know maximize our potential to take the maximum gain possible from the market. Otherwise, we’ll be leaving gains on the table and we strong dislike leaving gains on the table. Stick to your game plan. Let your winners fly and cut those losses.