The market was primed to go higher today as Intel Corporation (INTC) and CSX Corp. (CSX), two key market leaders, were rocking after hours last night after reporting earnings. Futures were exploding higher due to those reports, and the fact that daily and sixty-minute short-term charts were oversold. A nice combination for the bulls to get some momentum. Then over night the news from overseas on their economies, plus further bad news on the Ebloa virus, caused the futures to reverse hard, allowing for a massive gap down across the board of 1% or a bit more. That's unusual for the indexes. They rarely move that much in a day at the open.

The bulls tried many times, and quite successfully, to drive the market up intraday, with two-hundred point rallies on the Dow. After failing to hold those rallies higher the market finally found the type of move higher late in the day normally puts in the short-term bottom, but we'll have to see about that since after hours we're seeing carnage in eBay Inc. (EBAY), and especially Netflix, Inc. (NFLX), which is down an incredible 100 points at the time of this writing. If you own froth into earnings, this is sadly what can happen. Many trading careers ended this evening. No mercy in this environment. With the VIX printing a topping stick, and, thus, giving the market hope to go higher short term, it'll be interesting to see what the market can do after these two debacles after hours. It's hurting the market after hours, to be sure, and now we'll see if they recover, or if today's topping stick in the VIX was simply a head fake.

Froth, or now the lack of it. The damage has been done. Too many months of the bull-bear spread over 30%. Many months over 40%. The bull-bear spread is now down to 20.5%. The bulls down to 37% with the bears up to 17%, but 17% is nowhere near where they need to be as time moves along. We need to see the bears up to near 30%. Give me at least 25%, but hopefully 30% or more. The bulls are leaving, but only moving towards agnostic. It looks like it's going to take a lot more to get them to turn fully bearish, thus, it appears that over time the market will have to go much lower to create a lot more fear, and you can see how fast that can happen. In time, I would think it's possible that we'll see sub-10 on the spread, but time will tell folks.

For now, the market is giving froth the medicine it needs. The lower the market goes over time the happier we'll all be as it will allow the market to rally hard when the correction finally does come to an end. Like I've said many times, it'll feel like a bear even though it's not. If we can get 15-20%+ on this correction, we'll all celebrate. 1700-1600 would be a gift for the bulls, unless, of course, you never sell and have to deal with those types of levels. Even though froth has improved, bears really haven't yet. We need a lot more time so be patient before going in hard to the long side for a sustainable move higher.

So the selling is here folks. With today's VIX stick we should rally as we're also very oversold. That said, the earnings tonight may cause a double-bottom test tomorrow, and if it does go that low, we need to be ready for the possibility that it'll just keep going lower. There are never any guarantees about bottoms in a correction, even when one clearly appears to be present. It doesn't get any clearer than today's VIX stick, but we shall see if the market can overcome the nastiness from NFLX and EBAY.

Keep things light. Nothing aggressive. Stops tight please.

Peace,

Jack

Jack Steiman is author of SwingTradeOnline.com ( www.swingtradeonline.com ). Former columnist for TheStreet.com, Jack is renowned for calling major shifts in the market, including the market bottom in mid-2002 and the market top in October 2007.

Mr. Steiman's commentaries and index analysis represent his own opinions and should not be relied upon for purposes of effecting securities transactions or other investing strategies, nor should they be construed as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any security. You should not interpret Mr. Steiman's opinions as constituting investment advice. Trades mentioned on the site are hypothetical, not actual, positions.

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in

The Market Oracle is a FREE Financial Markets Forecasting & Analysis web-site.
(c) 2005-2024 MarketOracle.co.uk (Market Oracle Ltd) - Market Oracle Ltd asserts copyright on all articles authored by our editorial team and all comments posted. Any and all information provided within the web-site, is for general information purposes only and Market Oracle Ltd do not warrant the accuracy, timeliness or suitability of any information provided on this site. nor is or shall be deemed to constitute, financial or any other advice or recommendation by us. and are also not meant to be investment advice or solicitation or recommendation to establish market positions. We do not give investment advice and our comments are an expression of opinion only and should not be construed in any manner whatsoever as recommendations to enter into a market position either stock, option, futures contract, bonds, commodity or any other financial instrument at any time. We recommend that independent professional advice is obtained before you make any investment or trading decisions. By using this site you agree to this sites Terms of Use. From time to time we promote or endorse certain products / services that we believe are worthy of your time and attention. In return for that endorsement and only in the cases where you purchase directly though us may we be compensated by the producers of those products.