The stock market had a volatile and negative session today. The indices were all over the place, but ended up near the lows for the day going away. The day started out with a big gap down on negative futures,they immediately rallied to come right back up to retest the highs of late Friday, but failed right there, sold off sharply and by mid-day were at the session lows at that point.

They then snapped back substantially and took back about 1/2 the rally on the Nasdaq 100 and about 7/8 of it on the S&P 500, with the S&P reaching back up near that triple top we've had over the last 3 days near 985. They tried twice to get through and rolled over sharply into the close, in the last 45 minutes or so giving back all of it and then some.

Net on the day the Dow closed at 9033, down 231.77. The S&P 500 at just over 955 was down 30.36. The Nasdaq 100 at 1283.43 was down 69.33. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOXX) lost 9.83, or more than 4% today, closing at 234.09.

Advance-declines were about 22 to 9 negative on New York and about 20 to 8 on Nasdaq. Up/down volume was 4 1/2 to 1 negative on New York on total volume of a rather light 1.13 billion. Nasdaq traded a little over 2 billion, but had a ratio of 7 1/2 to 1 negative on advancing over declining volume.

The vast majority of stocks on TheTechTrader.com board were lower today, with the exception of the short instruments. The QID was up 6.61, the SDS up 5.12, and the DUG at 44.88 up 2.88.

Just a couple stocks were up fractions, Former portfolio position A-Power Energy (APWR) was up 51 cents, and Morgan Stanley (MS) up 43 cents, along with portfolio position QCOR at 7.92 up 22 cents. That one reached 8.10 this afternoon, a 13-year high.

UAUA had a terrific session, although gave back a chunk of it at the end of the day. It ran as high as 14 3/4, closed at 13.80, still up 1.13 on 19 million shares on another drop in oil today. Continental (CAL) inched ahead by a small fraction.

On the downside, AAPL was down 6.95 ahead of tonight's earnings, CF down 5.04, POT also in the weak agri-group down 8.18, Mosaic (MOS) down 2,20, and AGU down 3.66.

The Brazilian ETF (EWZ) was down 2.95, ANR in the metals group down 2.96, DryShips (DRYS) lost 2.13 and SunPower (SPWR) in a weak solar group down 4.89 today.

Stepping back and reviewing the hourly chart patterns, the indices moved back and forth in the morning, and then broke in the late morning to retest yesterday's lows successfully, but late in the day rolled over and took out the 3-day lows on the Nasdaq 100 and the 3-day rising trendline on the S&P 500, although that held near price support, and it's going to very interesting to see if they follow through to the downside. If they do, we have a very distinct possibility of once again retesting the spike lows down near 1200 on the Nasdaq 100 and perhaps back down towards the 840-860 zone on the S&P 500.

Good trading!

Harry

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