More Volatility In Store?

Note: There is no audio version of today’s commentary.

More Volatility In Store?  Greenspan volatility again as he jawbones about possible wage inflation. This is, of course, after Robert Rubin, Abby Cohen, and a parade of Fed governors tells us about growth and low inflation.

Friday the S&Ps traded as if the United States was an emerging market–ridiculous. The S&Ps moved something like -2, +10, -2, before we got into the day. The bond market has been declining for eight months, but the perception has changed as we zero in on a 6% long bond yield, which will certainly add to the equity market volatility. Friday’s economic number fiasco led to lighter volume day with the major averages finishing up on the day and the Dow managing to make a new high close.

The NYSE openings have become treacherous with all the pre-market hype. This continues to make intraday trading risk easier to manage than two- to five-day trades. To keep it in perspective, Peter Lynch of Fidelity mentioned in one of his books that if he spent more than 15 minutes on the economy, it was a lot.

Target Stocks Of The Day  Keep an eye on patterns in Ameritrade [AMTD>AMTD], MCI Worldcom [WCOM>WCOM], Lucent [LU>LU], and Ascend Communications [ASND>ASND].

Other continuation patterns include: Federated Department Stores [FD>FD], Ford [F>F], Hewlett Packard [HWP>HWP], Boise Cascade [BCC>BCC], Franklin Resources [BEN>BEN], and Cisco [CSCO>CSCO]

Program trading numbers  Buy: 7.94. Sell: 3.10. Fair Value: 5.58.

Announcement: Views From The Trading Desk will not appear tomorrow, Tuesday, May 11, because Kevin will be traveling. His commentary will be back Wednesday, May 12.

Editor’s note: If you want to learn more about Kevin Haggerty’s trading strategies, click on the link below to go to his new series of tutorial articles.