If You Are Scrolling, You Are Profiting

There was an attempt in each direction to break

out of the 1198.10 – 1194.50 trading range in play since 11:50 a.m. ET on Friday

until 10:45 a.m. yesterday. The downside attempt was to 1192.75 just before

11:00 a.m., and the upside attempt was on the 3:35 p.m. bar to an 1198.78 high,

before closing at the top of yesterday’s range at 1197.51, +0.1%. NYSE volume

was very light at 1.17 billion shares with the volume ratio neutral at 51 and

breadth +572. One would say that the market action was okay because there was no

downside continuation following Friday’s major index price decline. The Dow

virtually unchanged after Friday’s 38.10 close, and the Nasdaq
(
$COMPQ |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating)

at 2076, +0.2%.

The primary sectors all closed green, except the

SMH (semiconductors), -0.4%. The XBD and RTH were both +0.8%, followed by the

(
OIH |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), +0.6%. The XLE closed +0.3% yesterday, hitting a new
“Generals’

Pullback” rally high of 42.90, which is +13.1% in 14 days without any close

below the low of a high day. The anemic volume yesterday was highlighted even

more by the major index proxies with the
(
SPY |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) trading only 36mm shs vs. its

68mm share average and the QQQQ 53mm vs. 96mm.

If you were scrolling your “Above the Line” stock

selection list, there were some excellent contracted volatility patterns at

the five-minute charts yesterday for excellent intraday trades. As I often

repeat — all too often — if you are scrolling, you are profiting, especially

when the major indices are not giving you much range to work with. We need some

more CNBC wrong-way hype, like last week’s jobs report, etc., to get the

intraday volatility needed for the index proxies/futures.

Have a good trading day,

Kevin Haggerty

P.S. I will be
referring to some charts here:
www.thechartstore.com in the future.