An unremarkable session
Monday’s
trade was unremarkable, and typical of a session preceding an
economic report, in this case Tuesday’s consumer price index release.
Turnover on both Big Board and Nasdaq
was brisk for a Monday, with Friday’s triple-witching contributing to the
elevated activity.
Breadth was weak, as many
interest-sensitives nosed south in tandem with bonds and ahead of Tuesday’s data
docket.
In techland, Xerox’ earnings
warning late Friday had no effect on the stock or anything else, as some had
feared. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s [MSFT>MSFT] 2-point-plus gain comforted
some players, as it inches closer to a record.
Away from tech, retailers rang up more
gains on a report that store traffic picked up over the weekend as well as
optimism ahead of Tuesday’s retail sales report.
Among the Internet
glamours, top-tier issues traded mixed with a higher
bias…Several stocks cleared the top of their bases: Go2Net
[gnet>gnet] broke out of a seven-month base on its heaviest volume in six
weeks…Netscout [NTCT>NTCT] busted out of a four-week trading range
on more activity than in any other session in 13 weeks…Epiphany
[EPNY>EPNY] cleared a three-week congestion area, only to close below the
pivot point…
In all, this was a session easily
forgotten — and one that the market needs a whole lot more of just to keep
everyone honest.