Monday Mop-Up

Arthur Dent said he “could never get the hang of Thursdays” but Mondays seem to be very bad mojo for the market this year. I almost stayed home this morning when the markets opened up (I know I said I wasn’t going to look but I’m an addict) but the Nasdaq never looked healthy and one glance at the SOX and I was out the door for the day! The Nasdaq lost another 2% today! That’s a full 10% in a month while the Dow and the S&P are down around 7% but the Nasdaq is like a stone around the neck of the other indices which are now all firmly below their 200 dmas. Volume wasn’t even there today so there is no reason at all to think this is over. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EDJI&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=%5EGSPC,%5EIXIC Jim Cramer is calling for a bottom because someone needs to start recruiting buyers before we lose another 10% but I can’t see any reason to catch this knife of a market the way things look. He’s a little right calling the oil bottom but crude lost another dollar today, very close to my prediction of $70 but the oil stocks took it very badly and dropped another 3%. Hopefully (and I know this sucks) we will get a nice 500 point drop this week and then maybe we can talk about a bottom – we’ll see in a few hours how Japan takes today’s action but I’d be betting Asia down today. Even Sears gave up ground today and that’s very, very bad! Gold dropped just a bit but I’ll be watching copper tomorrow which has been holding up the metals but just dropped below its 50 dma of $3.28 and has a mile to go to the 200 dma at $2.40. If Global growth is really slowing, this is the earliest indicator we will get. http://stockcharts.com/gallery/?%24copper Gold is off 20%, oil is only off 7%, the dollar is up 2% in a week but still down 5% for the month, the Nikkei is off 15% and other foreign exchanges are off as much as 25% so do not go thinking this is as bad as it can get! ===================================== I should have stayed and played oil down as Valero made that very obvious this morning but I think the sector drop of 20% in a month vs. oil down 7% is a little too dangerous at the moment. ADBE was a good call, jumping 3% today on an upgrade but it’s still a stock which makes it a very dangerous place to put money as anyone holding LEH can attest! LEH lost 5.5% after reporting a 47% increase in profits over last year, dropping the current p/e to just over 10 so you need to think about what exactly a stock has to do to find a buyer! Looking at the top 10 gainers as they go across the screen I’d say there were no actual buyers, just flukes. Sorry to be so negative but I calls ’em as I see them and I see dead stocks… Everywhere!!!