Leaders Index 2-17-21

The market was moderately lower today, but it wasn’t overall such a bad session. The major averages gapped lower at the open but found a bottom relatively quickly. After that they rallied and recovered a lot of the early losses. All the major averages finished very close to their intraday trading highs and the losses were from the opening move. The Nasd averages were the weakest with the COMPQ and the NDX losing .58% and .54% respectively. The SPX was almost flat with a decline of only .03%. Volume was lower across the board. It fell 4.88% on the Nasd and 4.37% on the New York. This means that there was no distribution on any of the major averages. Leading stocks sold off today with the leaders index losing 2.32% on the day. The index closed high in its trading range and recovered its important 17dma after trading below it early. Volume was about unchanged and very light. The overall action of the market was not that bad today, despite the lower prices. The major averages and the leaders index all closed high in their trading ranges in a sign of buying coming in as prices fell. The lower volume also shows that large institutional players were not selling stocks heavily today. This is a sign of support. The charts of the major averages and the leaders index still look solid and little damage has been done. It basically looks like the market is hesitating a bit after making new highs. The market continues to be stretched, as I have been saying for a while, but right now it is not showing signs of an imminent top. Jerry