SP500 +0.03%, Dow Industrials +0.13%, Nasdaq 100 +0.05%, New York Composite +0.01%, Russell 2000 -0.46%, Transport -1.13%.
Markets dropped sharply at the opening after Home Sales data. Then recovered – and slid sideways in the afternoon session. (Trannies went across the grain.) That looks to me like traders are going to wait until the Fed speaks in the Wednesday afternoon session (NY time).
SP500:
The current trading range is clear on the above chart. For two days, SPX crept above the upper boundary – but that’s not usually how break outs occur. And now it is sitting back in the range. Today’s long tailed doji offers the bulls some hope – but I wouldn’t put too much weight on that. This week has lots of market moving data coming out – so that candle looks to me like a wait-and-see sign.
Institutional action in the large caps can hold indices steady. Breadth statistics in such cases are often a better representation of market sentiment. (I spent a fair amount of space in the Weekend Report on Breadth.)
Here are up-dated charts for the Advance/Decline Line and the AdvancingVolume/DeclineVolume Line for the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and Amex:
They all declined, in some cases strongly, while the large cap and blue chip indices remained flat. Not a good sign.
To add some meat to that view – New Lows soared on both the NYSE and the Nasdaq. New Lows hit 60 on the NYSE and 80 on the Nasdaq. Those figures are well up on anything seen for about three months.
A lot of selling is going on in the broad market which is being masked by action in the blue chips and the large caps.
Commodities:
CRB Index -0.01%. Industrial Metals +0.22%. IMs are the only commodity group where the chart is above both the 20-Day and 50-Day MA, and the 20-Day is above the 50-Day. That’s the strong point for Australia – particularly the Miners. Copper, the bell wether in the IMs, was up modestly +0.21%. Precious Metals flat at -0.01%. US$ Gold down a bit -0.17%.
Oz Stocks in NY:
BHP -0.11%. Rio +0.53%. (Rio had a wide range doji candle at the top of its range. That’s often an ominous sign. We need to see a big down day before getting too pessimistic.) Westpac +0.03%. It remains in a tight sideways consolidation. ANZ -0.5%. It is also in a sideways consolidation. EWA +0.37%. Ozzie Dollar +0.1%.
I can’t see that there’s much in any of that for Australia today. We’ll probably be in wait mode like the Americans. The opening will probably have a downward bias – but I can’t see a lot happening today.
(20min delay)