Stocks rallied in the afternoon trade to go narrowly positive for the week and only slightly down for the day after opening lower. The Nasdaq was the only index to finish in the green today, closing 0.4% higher to finish off a strong week. Wednesday's breakout and Thursday's up open in the S&P looked set to spark a bigger rally than the methodical rise we've seen so far in 2012, but yesterday's intraday sell-off put the S&P back into the upper level consolidation.
Today's action in the indices was quiet overall, but we did see some good action in individual stocks. If this is the kind of stock specific action we get on consolidation days, then this could be a great year for active traders! High beta tech was strong all day, and when the market bounced they had a nice push.
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) danced around yesterday’s low of $131.37 and the bears never had enough power to get a 30-60 minute close below that level. Even when we were on near our lows stocks didn’t want to go down.
The banks were hanging tough all day and we still had multiple set ups to “hawk”. Goldman Sachs (GS) finally pushed through $110 and on its way to $115. Other banks did okay as well but were not my focus.
Google (GOOG) finally had a nice bounce rewarding those for buying yesterday near the 200-day. If you missed it yesterday, it was buyable on relative strength today.
Apple (AAPL) also perked up a bit as a long vs. $444.
Baidu (BIDU) and Sina (SINA) were very impressive, as it appears there was some sort of catalyst late in the day for the Chinese internet stocks.
Netflix (NFLX) midday I talked about two pivot points: 1) $118.50 and then 2) yesterday’s high of $119.37. It closed at $123.83.
Marc Sperling was all over the Solar sector in the T3Live Virtual Trading Floor chat room today, lead by First Solar (FSLR). He tweeted about them a few times, something we will be trying to do more of to give some access to non-subscribers. The VTF still provides the complete and live picture of what we are doing in the markets every day.
We've mentioned Ren-Ren (RENN) and DangDang (Dang) a few times in the Morning Call recently and had the charts in “Off the Charts" newsletter. Before leaving for Spin class around lunch time I bought DANG back again as I saw some volume. It was a nice reward for always using my filters.
I did buy back Las Vegas Sands (LVS). The stock looks great after a break yesterday. Wynn Resorts (WYNN) is still a little lethargic but looks okay.
Gold (GLD) is on day three of the move that ignited Wednesday through $163.50-164.50. It’s now approaching resistance of $169-171.
Lululemon (LULU) continues to impress, making new highs.
It’s been a long week. It feels like the market is trying to climb higher, but just can't get the juice it needs to blast off. As mentioned, however, we are getting great moves in a few individual names, which is great.
While my focus was long most of the week, we did get some great shorts in Broadvision (BVSD) - $35 to $20 - and Sears (SHLD) - $53 to $45.
Everyone have a great weekend and enjoy your families!
*DISCLOSURES: Scott Redler is long SPY, OIH, GOOG, NFLX, AAPL, WYNN, LVS, LULU, WMT, GS, KV.A, GERN, DANG, VXX. Short DIA.
