More Sloshing
And the beat goes
on.
Yet another poor close for the Nasdaq
after opening up.
Wednesday, I pointed out three key
bells that all opened significantly lower, then reversed in the a.m. to close
little changed on turnover two to five times average.
The normal sequence of events
subsequent to such tape action is a follow-through the next a.m. in which at
least the prior day’s high, in this case Wednesday’s, is taken out.
One of Thursday’s features, then, was
that two of the three stocks in question, EMC
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didn’t get as far as Wednesday’s high, while the third, Sun
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but closed lower on the day.
Not the sort of behavior that you
would expect.
And as we know, it’s the unexpected
that’s worth noting.
Among the names, Actuate
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remained the hot enterprise software maker that it is.
Comverse
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well in the downdraft.
A few stocks came out of
Connors/Cooper 1-2-3-4s, i2
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Most didn’t, however, unable to take
out Wednesday’s high.
The bios are one group featuring a
number of shares that haven’t come off much of late.
Myriad Genetics
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Imclone
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Human Genome
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are a couple of others.
Ariba
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particular disappointment, unable to hold its own following Wednesday’s clean
bounce off its 200-day.
Most recent new issues haven’t perked
up much lately.
Which is exactly what you would expect
at this phase of the cycle.
Nevertheless, this is always a
valuable group to keep an eye on, for two reasons.
First, new leadership, the lifeblood
of a durable bull move, often comes from names that have recently gone public.
Second, the action of speculative
growth stocks such as these tells you something about sentiment.
Not institutional, big-money
sentiment, but swinger sentiment.
Otherwise, for the intermediate-term
player, there are no tough decisions these days as far as being invested or
being in cash.
Perhaps that is something to be
thankful for.