Bears Keep A Tight Lid On Stocks

The market was never able to really bounce today. All of the major indexes closed down for the day. Semis got hit the hardest, down nearly 5% for the day. The only groups I see that were higher were defensive stocks like utilities.

Breadth was awful today. The Nasdaq saw 275 new lows, which I believe is the highest level of the year. Volume rose today, which also makes for a distribution day.

The SPX rose +0.3% this week, but the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 both fell again on the week. It appears that as quickly as this nascent rally started, it might just as soon be cooked. The SPX has not undercut Wednesdays lows, but the Nazz and Rut have. We need to see some real strength early next week.

Measures of investor anxiety were all higher again today, but we all know by now that these are secondary measures of the market, and what is needed is for some strong price/volume follow-thru to one of these rally attempts.

It was nice to see AAPL and GOOG buck the weakness today, but overall there was little to smile about.

long AAPL, GOOG