NASDAQ still waiting for confirmation of near-term trend

The nice gain for NASDAQ on Wednesday was quite welcome, but we're still in relatively uncharted territory, in that the two-day gain may still have been only the proverbial dead-cat bounce. It will take another couple of days before the near-term trend sorts itself out. And of course Friday will be a tough day since there is still a fair amount of geopolitical risk which causes a lot of people to exit positions in advance of the weekend when anything can happen.

 

I'm actually happy that futures are down, since it really is still too early for short-term speculators to get overly-excited after a two-day bounce after a new near-term low. If futures had been up this morning, I would have then expected the bearish short-term speculators to "sell into any rally", but with futures being down, I expect that semi-bullish near-term speculators will give serious consideration to "buying the dip." No guarantee of that, but it is a default bias.

 

The good news is that the economic outlook is still reasonably solid, which is the foundation of any bullish stock market.

 

-- Jack Krupansky