Leaders Index 1-10-20

The market opened a bit higher yesterday, but couldn’t hold the gains. After trading with small gains and losses most of the session late selling came in and the major averages closed with modest losses. All the major averages finished at or very near their intraday trading lows due to the late sellers coming in. The declines were pretty evenly spread out as the COMPQ and the NDX fell .27% and .26% respectively. The SPX declined .29%. Volume was lower across the board. It fell 4.86% on the Nasd and 9.21% on the New York. Leading stocks were mixed to slightly lower, but held up better than the overall market. The leaders index fell .17% on the day. It finished trading in about the middle of its trading range and volume was much lower than Thursday and well below average. After some early gains yesterday the market reversed lower and sold off late in the session. This is a bit of a negative reversal, but a pretty mild one. The losses were small and the fact that volume was lower in both the major averages and the leaders index shows that large institutional players were not selling stocks heavily yesterday. Due to the lower volume there was no distribution in any of the major averages. The overall distribution count remains low. The market has come a long way in a pretty short time and has become a little stretched. The high jump on the major averages is at fairly elevated levels, which can lead to some short term weakness. The kind of reversal we saw yesterday can lead to some minor weakness, but the charts of the major averages and the leaders index look good. Any damage done yesterday was small. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a little consolidation or even a mild pullback in the next few days, but the overall uptrend appears intact. Jerry