Nasdaq Composite -0.87%. New York Composite -0.56%. Russell 2000 -1.18%. Dow Industrials -0.57%. SP500 -0.65%.
All Indices were down, volume increased. All Indices are now down to major Moving Average supports. New York Composite appears to have broken down from it consolidation. Being a broad based index, that’s not a good sign.
Here’s the SP500:
The oblique support line I showed yesterday has broken to the down side. That only takes the Index down to dual support – horizontal and 20-Day MA. Dual supports are always powerful stuff, difficult to break through. But there’s not much else to console bulls in this chart. Indicators are heading down, downside momentum is picking up, and indicators have plenty of airspace underneath them. SP500 might stutter here, but I think there’s more downside to come.
Some breadth measures deteriorated significantly in this session.
On the NYSE, New Highs deteriorated sharply. They’ve been above 100 for the past sixteen trading days. They could only get to 66 today. Meanwhile, New Lows accelerated to the upside. They hit 38 in this session, the highest reading in 21 trading sessions. That’s still not in “panic” sell mode. New Lows have to hit above 50 to trigger that assessment – but it is clearly into the nervous stage. NH/NL Ratio of 63.5%.
NewHighs/NewLows on the Nasdaq, which has been leading the market, were worse than the NYSE. 54/57 – below par with a NH/NL Ratio of 48.6%.
The Nasdaq Composite was very weak last night. Two factors – general market weakness – and Apple. It’s not that Apple cratered. Apple made its well-advertised presentation last night, announcing a new iPhone and its latest gadget, an iWatch.
Initially, the stock fell, then rose, then headed sharply down. It had been up early in the session. It finished down -0.38%. In the chart below, you can see that Apple had a wide-range day – over 7%. We haven’t seen a day like that in Apple for a very long time. The initial assessment of the market is – It’s a Dud. That might be a bit harsh, let’s say underwhelming. The announcements by Tim Cook had been well-known in the market, so something out-of-the-box had to be said for the Apple stock to be very positive today. Here’s the chart:
The 50-Day Moving Average did provide support, so we might have to wait till tomorrow to see if Apple is in a major downhill slide.
Here’s the long term Weekly Chart for Apple.
Apple had crept just above the resistance of the September, 2012 highs, but has now clearly broken back below that level. Before this week, Apple had shown a three-candle reversal pattern, just like it did in September, 2012. CCI shows a strong negative divergence, and the MFI had reached overbought regions. Anything is possible in the markets, but the odds are now for more downside. Apple makes up a big proportion of the Nasdaq, so that’s a negative for the broad market.
Commodities.
CRB Index -0.33%. The big news, however, was in the Industrial Metals Group. Down a whopping -2.35%. Copper down -2%. Spot Iron Ore down -0.5%. Precious Metals Group -0.43%. That decline was due mainly to big falls in Platinum and Palladium, both of which have major industrial uses. GLD was actually up a little +0.12%.
Commodity prices are often affected by movements in the U.S. Dollar Index. It, however, was down -0.18%. That might have been a factor in the stabilisation of the GLD price – which is now close to major support.
Oz Stocks in NY:
BHP up +0.33%. Rio up +0.52%. Westpac -1.27%. ANZ -0.58%. EWA -0.6%. Ozzie Dollar -0.83%.
Given the big falls in Industrial Metals, and the Ozzie Dollar those rises in BHP and Rio are solid. I can’t see them being repeated in Australia today. The nascent rebound in those stocks is likely to be snuffed out today.
(20min delay)