Ho-Hum
Not a
particularly impressive day
in Nazland.
Volume was lax, and not the pick-up
you normally expect on a Tuesday.
Within the list, most opticals and
bios fell.
The majority of benchmarks rose, but
on waning volume.
The picture for the intermediate-term
trader of growth stocks is one of fewer setups versus the story two weeks ago.
The reason is that plenty of leaders,
with names like Brocade
(
BRCD |
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PowerRating), Juniper
(
JNPR |
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PowerRating), Ciena
(
CIEN |
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PowerRating), and
Broadcom
(
BRCM |
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PowerRating), are now pulling back following meaty runs, perhaps in the
early stage of building new bases.
There are also a number of stocks —
Check Point
(
CHKP |
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follow-through or an outright failure in the days following their breakout.
Technically, these latter stocks need
to re-set themselves, removing them from the watch list of many traders
operating in the intermediate time frame.
Other names, such as Tibco
(
TIBX |
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PowerRating)
and Mercury Interactive
(
MERQ |
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PowerRating), are coming off more than they should,
leaving the trader with fewer vehicles with which to play.
Monday, one exception to the so-so
showing among senior techs was Sun
(
SUNW |
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PowerRating), clearing a four-month base on
rising trade.
Elsewhere, the action in Applied Micro
(
AMCC |
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PowerRating) was a microcosm of the overall growth sector of late.
AMCC broke out of a four month
cup-with-high-handle, but volume was far from robust, leaving open the question
of how much follow-through there will be.
Intersil
(
ISIL |
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PowerRating) has shown nice
accumulation over the past half dozen sessions as it traces the right side of
its cup.
Names like Digital Lightwave
(
DIGL |
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PowerRating)
and Exfo
(
EXFO |
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PowerRating) experienced more disappointment.
Corning
(
GLW |
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PowerRating) is a good example of
a stock that two weeks ago wedged higher on successively lower volume days, then
hit a new high on good volume, but couldn’t follow through.
GLW bounced back from Monday’s
drubbing, but volume decreased.
Verisign
(
VRSN |
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PowerRating) remains in the
seventh week of a flat base.
Microchip Tech
(
MCHP |
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PowerRating) poked its
head out of a seven-day handle, yet volume was below average.
Micromuse
(
MUSE |
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PowerRating), a bright light
as recently as last week, continued to disappoint, falling for the sixth day.
In all, a ho-hum session for the
intermediate trader.
And just what you might expect for a
session in late July.
Kind of makes you look forward to
summer’s end.