Stock Market Commentary 10/21/08 - Not Bullish, But Maybe Constructive...

For starters, here's a very funny video, lyrics re-written by a member of our live stock market chatroom.

While Tuesday certainly wasn’t a bullish day for the stock market, I’m going to go out on a limb and call it a constructive day. Although there were pretty big losses at the end of the day, and a lot of the selling came in the last hour again, volume was even lighter than it was on yesterday’s up move, and the wild swings, although still there, seem to be calming down a bit. I take this as people starting to come to terms with the situation, and starting to make slightly more rational decisions regarding their investments, rather than the massive panic buying and panic selling that has been the 800 pound gorilla in the room for the last few weeks.

That’s not to say things are getting any better from an economic standpoint, or that this market won’t see any more panic buying or selling, as we are still at extreme levels from a number of perspectives, but the action this week does hint at some form of resolution being worked out for the market. That is something to be optimistic about, as is the fact that at the time of this writing, AAPL is up 10% in after hours trading, and YHOO is up better than 5%.

The VIX didn’t gain much back after yesterday’s nearly 25% haircut. That’s another reason to be optimistic about where this market seems to be going. A nice, orderly consolidation/ pull back would be in keeping with our thinking that the markets are trying to stabilize here.

The Dow fell 231.77, or 2.50 percent, to 9,033.66, on even less volume than Monday, when the volume was relatively light compared to recent sessions. While anything can still happen as the market digests all the economic news that has been thrown at it recently, we can see the swings getting more & more narrow in range, and the daily chart shows a bit of a triangle formation starting to set up.

The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 30.35, or 3.08 percent, to 955.05. On the daily chart you can see the same ascending triangle pattern forming, but below is the hourly chart, which shows what looks like pretty solid support right around 950.

The Nasdaq composite index shed 73.35, or 4.14 percent, to 1,696.68. the 15 minute chart shows a slight breach of an intraday double bottom, but the after hours trading in AAPL & YHOO would seem to indicate a higher open for the index, barring any real turnarounds.

Light, sweet crude fell $3.36 to settle at $70.89 barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. USO fell nearly 5% on the day, but is holding above recent lows. We could see a consolidation here, which would probably be a healthy thing.

Gold fooled us last night, metals looked very nice yesterday and took a hit today. However gold didn’t break the recent lows either, and if it does, the September lows aren’t far off either.

Our portfolio stocks remain light into what is still a very choppy market. We are going to keep things pretty light until this thing stabilizes a bit more, and will continue to trim losses and take profits wherever applicable. As such we are going to add one new short to the TBT list to compliment our one long, which we are raising the stop on to greatly reduce the downside exposure after a weak close today. We are very optimistic about the way this market is acting, and are hoping that we will see some of the best tradin conditions of the year in the next month or two, but patience will be required. There are some really nice setups in the watchlists above for intraday trading purposes tomorrow, of which there should be plenty. Have a great evening, see you tomorrow.