NASDAQ hangs in there

NASDAQ fought off a bear attack at the open on Thursday, falling 29 points shortly after the open, but then steadily clawing back all but a single point of those intraday losses by the close. Rather impressive if you ask me. Still, we aren't seeing a lot of conviction to secure a clean breakout above the March near-term peak. We need to see a full 1% to 2% above that near-term peak to start feeling some comfort at these levels.

 

NASDAQ futures are down moderately this morning, suggesting that traders expect some profit-taking at the open, but once again what we really want to see is whether the bears pile on to an early dip for a true rout, or whether the bulls buy any dip.

 

It's Friday again, so short-term speculators will be prone to closing positions (long or short) in advance of the weekend, when anything can happen. But, some of the selling after the open on Thursday, as well as the recovery through the rest of the day may have been these short-term speculators closing out positions a day early since trading can be so slow in these lazy days of summer.

 

I just got lucky – yesterday, on a whim (and after a lot of thought over the months) I decided that Nike (NKE) was cheap enough for me and bought some call options, and now the stock is popping this morning. Actually, I realized recently that one of my "mistakes" over the past year was not acting promptly when I did come up with a good idea.

 

-- Jack Krupansky