Thursday, September 16, 2010
MANY DIVERGENCES EXIST, THE RALLY IS STRUGGLING, FRIDAY COULD BE WILD
Using my Bob Prechter fundamentals can give us an edge on predicting future movement of the financial markets.
Quite a snoozefest in the markets today. Looks like people were already positioned for options expiration day tomorrow. Volume again hovered at the 900 million share mark on the NYSE, which is very low. Various markets diverged today with some making new lows and others making new highs; it’s a truly fractured and confused time for the markets at the moment. This is very bearish at this present time. A nice smooth uptrend should have all, or the overwhelming majority, participating more or less in sync with each other’s highs and lows. What’s occurring now shows a struggling market in the final stages of a large and overextended rally. One other thing of note is that the S&P was significantly weaker today than the other indices and you can see it internally as 301 shares closed down on the day with only 191 shares closing up.
Looking at a 5min chart of the Dow, it looks a lot like a triangle and thrust at this point, although it’s far from perfect. So if the above count is correct, it means that the late day rally today was part of a thrust, which is a finishing move. And if you look at my counts from yesterday (4hr S&P and 1hr Dow) the triangle and 5th wave thrust fits well to finish up waves v. of c of (ii).
With the setup just continuing to look more appealing for the bears, we can add to our long list of evidence of a major top forming along with the fact that the VIX market sell signal is still well in place from September 7, the anniversary of a major top on September 19, 2008 may be “celebrated” Friday or Monday, and that options expiration day is tomorrow, probably means Friday and early next week can get real exciting for the bears.
Just one more divergence today to add to many throughout the market and through various momentum indicators is the fact that while the Dow was thrusting from a triangle to a new high, the S&P lagged and could not make a new high at all. Again, these little signs on the intraday charts MAY be trying to tell us that a top is essentially in already.
Here’s just another little technical indicator showing a top forming and a major pullback is coming ahead. On the Dow’s hourly stochastics you can see they are confused at the top end of the range as they have been flip-flopping all over each other and have actually formed a nice wedge into the upper right corner. Just like in market prices, when wedges are formed they usually signal a severely weakened trend that results in sharp reversals.
Lastly, the S&P Small Cap 600 made a very slight new low today and has been lagging the rest of the market significantly along with the Russell 2000 and the financial sector (XLF). This is a bit unusual because the higher risk tech index, Nasdaq 100, has been exceeding the other indices with new highs lately which is an unusual divergence in my opinion. Usually technology and small caps are grouped together in the “higher risk” category and tend to make new highs and lows more in less in sync with each other. This is not the case here. Again, a sign of a fractured and confused overall market.
Now the Russell 2000 did not make a new low with the S&P Small Cap 600, and normally I would consider that bullish. But in this case I don’t because usually that would be bullish if it were to happen at the end of a downtrend, and also because looking at how fractured this market is right now and all the bearish setups I see all over the place, I can’t see that as a bullish signal. I think within the current context of a severely fractured market, the small cap index is telling us that it wants to go lower.
Now all these little divergences can be cleared up with a strong push to new highs by all the indices tomorrow, but that still won’t erase the overall bearish potential here at all. If the charge higher is made tomorrow then I would take that as the markets just wanted to take out their August highs before making their tops and reversing sharply as expected.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS JUST AN ANALYSIS BLOG AND IN NO WAY GUARANTEES OR IMPLIES ANY PROFIT OR GAIN. THE DATA HERE IS MERELY AN EXPRESSED OPINION. TRADE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
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