STTG Market Recap Jan 14, 2015 – Stock Trading To Go
Indexes continue to struggle and it remains a period to be cautious. Unlike the prior 2 sessions when we saw serious spikes in the premarket, today the market was down severely premarket and that weakness continued all day until mid afternoon when some buyers showed up to relieve some of the pressure. Still the S&P 500 fell 0.58% and the NASDAQ 0.48%. In economic news, U.S. retail sales dropped 0.9% in December, the biggest slide since January 2014, following a 0.4% gain in November that was smaller than previously estimated, according to the Commerce Department. This was a surprise considering people expected spending to boom with lower gas prices.
Fun fact: The S&P 500 has moved an average of 0.95% per day so far in 2015. That’s more than double the average daily price change of 0.53% for 2014, which was the calmest year in U.S. stocks since 2006.
The NASDAQ bounced off its 50 day moving average and did not create a new lower low vs the early January low. The S&P 500 also closed just above its 50 day moving average but intraday it actually punctured the early January low. A close below those early January lows and/or the mid December ones could spark a much more serious correction. Whatever the case we’re not in great conditions to be taking much risk on. Here are longer term charts for the indexes, please note the potential “gap fills” we see in the NASDAQ chart – that would mean we go down in the future at some point to fill those levels. Even the first one is down at the 4500 level on the NASDAQ.
The NYSE McClellan Oscillator is negative but not in an extreme position. Need to see it lower to try to anticipate a short term bounce at least.
Treasury yields fell off a cliff again. We have now expanded the chart to 2 years to show the scope of this damage. The 1.9% range is now gone and we are talking 1.8%s. Lower yields usually are a combination of worries by the bond market about the economy in the future and a flight to safety trade.
We saw a nice rally in oil today – finally as inventories in the U.S. were lower than expected. But as we have been saying in the video recaps we could get all the way back up to $49ish and it would mean little in the big scheme of things as oil would still be in a downtrend. So we are close to that now – oil needs to get over this purple line to reverse trend.
We highlighted copper yesterday as a significant issue – today it fell apart again and look at the explosion in volume. Wow. Prices are at lows last seen in 2009.
Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), the largest publicly traded copper producer, tumbled 11 percent to bring its three-day rout to 21%.
There was a lot of volatile action in commodities – natural gas had its best day since last February.
JPMorgan (JPM) fell as the largest U.S. bank said fourth-quarter profit fell 6.6%, as the sale of a commodities unit pushed fixed-income revenue lower.
Blackberry (BBRY) spiked nearly 30% in the closing minutes of the day as rumors of a Samsung buyout hit the market. This whole move started at 3:40 PM.
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STTG Market Recap Jan 14, 2015 – Stock Trading To Go
