Nothing more than a little consolidation in the stock market

As expected, today was basically a consolidation day for the stock market. With a modest amount of volatility, the market was sometimes up and sometimes down, leaving the Dow closing down a little and NASDAQ closing up a little. No clear sense of direction. Traders were taking advantage of the volatility. Meanwhile, short-term speculators were not quite willing to add to their "risk" , but not quite willing to take too much out of the market as well.

 

The good news is that the bulk of the gains from earlier in the week have held up. The bad news is that traders and speculators get antsy when the market goes "sideways" as it did today, and their limited patience will eventually lead them to take bigger profits or even reverse their bias to "risk off" unless some major players step into the market.

-- Jack Krupansky