The battle continues, ahead of a holiday weekend

The nice gain for NASDAQ on Wednesday was quite welcome, but may or may not stick. There is still a significant possibility that this week's gains may only be a classic dead-cat bounce. I'm betting that the gains will stick, but I've been wrong before, so I'm also getting ready to buy more stock(s) on any significant dips.

 

Tomorrow, Friday, April 18, is a stock market holiday (Good Friday), so today is the last trading day before the long weekend. There will be a bias towards closing out short-term speculative positions ahead of the long weekend, when anything can happen. That said, NASDAQ futures are up on general relief that quarterly reports were not worse. OTOH, bearish short-term speculators will probably continue to sell into any rally. Even that said, the balance of power between the bulls and the bears remains unresolved, so how the day opens is not a reliable indicator of how it closes.

 

It will be interesting to see how GOOG and IBM fare today. I may buy a little of both on any dip.

 

-- Jack Krupansky