Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Today's Markets

SPY: -2.87%
QQQQ: -2.85%
IWM: -2.56%

This week isn't turning out to be a good one for the market. For the second day in a row the market experienced a big sell-off.

To place this in perspective, here is a 7-day chart in 5 minute increments.



Last week the SPYs had a huge rally, largely spurred on by the Fed's rate cuts. From bottom to top, the SPUs gained about 5.28%. However, the SPYs have dropped hard, losing 4.13% from their top on Friday.



Today, the markets gapped lower and then continued downward from there. The good news is the selling was pretty controlled -- meaning there aren't any huge downward moving bars. However, there was some volume pops at the end of trading, indicating traders didn't want to hold shares overnight. That's never a good sign.



The QQQQs have given up all of their gains made last week. So much for that rally.

Over the last two days, notice the severity of the downward sloping angle -- that's some heavy selling.



Here's a closer look at the last two days. Near the close today, the sellers were out in force, indicating there was some pretty strong concern.



The good news with the IWMs is they haven't sold off as hard as you would think, given this index has more risk. But the reason for that may be it has sold off far harder over the last 6 months or so.



Yesterday I commented that the IWM sell-off wasn't as bad as the other indexes. However, today's action made up for that in spades. Note the sharpness of the sell-off and the heavy selling at the end.

Over the last two days I've taken an in-depth look at all three of the above indexes. In all three analysis I noted the market was in the middle of a bear market rally. Below are the daily charts with the Fibonacci numbers that shows the markets have reached their respective Fibonacci levels and are now headed back down.