Leaders Index 3-3-14

The market sold off today, after big declines in Asia and Europe, on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The major averages sold off hard at the open and continued lower for a couple of hours and then staged a rally to close well off their intraday lows. The COMPQ finished near it’s highs of the day, down .72% while the SPY was off .74% and closed in the middle of it’s trading range. Volume was well below Friday’s level, showing little real selling pressure. Leading stocks held up pretty well as the leaders index was down only .12% on much lower and below average volume. The index closed in the upper half of it’s trading range and the green candle shows that it also finished above it’s open. It closed just below it’s 9dma, the first time it has done this in over a month. Overall it appears the damage done today was not that bad. U. S. markets did much better than Asian and European markets. The SPY closed just above it’s 10dma and the COMPQ finished just below the 10dma. The fact that the sell off was small and held important moving averages on low volume shows that there was not a lot of selling pressure. The bottom line is that it could have been a lot worse and if the markets can rally back in the next couple of days the rally should be ok, provided things don’t get worse in Ukraine. Gold had a good day today and the GLD broke out of a nice cup and handle pattern on volume that was 45% above average. It also had a buyable gap up and a pocket pivot. This bodes well for gold prices going forward. Jerry