Volatile And Liquid
The Qs are relatively flat on the day as we approach
midday, yet the early trading action has been both volatile and
liquid. Recapping the morning, we’ve had a "get them while they’re
hot" exhaustion gap fueled in part by a strong productivity report,
followed by a retail dose of "What are we doing buying up here?" spike
down to hourly trend support, which coincided with a bit of Greenspan’s
"things aren’t looking too bad" to exacerbate the bounce. Several
items are at play today, including a rollover from the March to June futures
contract, which has led to choppy action on the lesser time frames, and we also
have a mid-quarter Intel
(
INTC |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) update scheduled for later today.
My early bias has been to trade on the side of the three-minute trend, which
has been helpful to guide the morning trade and provided a nice short trigger
following the exhaustion gap. Keeping an eye on Microsoft’s
(
MSFT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) early
weakness, along with the
(
$SOX.X |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) should it test key 600 support, may
provide clues into the afternoon trade.
Thursday March 7, 2002
12:00 P.M. ET
As I mentioned in yesterday’s
column, I felt that time would begin to play a key role in defining
Wednesday afternoon’s trade and the Qs indeed responded to a slightly oversold
stochastic reading coupled
with price support holding. As I’ve said a few dozen times over the past year,
stochastics and other oscillator indicators are only relevant when combined with
trend indicators, and decreasing readings as prices hold approximate supports
can provide clues to a further extension upon appropriate triggers.
Lastly, we are very, very
close to launching the expanded QQQ training platform which will include a
state-of-the-art trading simulator, so keep your eyes peeled for upcoming
announcements!
Good Trading!