Stocks Take a Breather

January 7, 2007

A major struggle for most of the day as stocks struggled to stay in the positive. Yet in the final minutes of the day, the indexes rallied to close the day in split fashion. For the NASDAQ it was comforting for it to only close slightly down on the day. On the news front there were no significant economic reports to hit the wires. There was a little Fedspeak, but nothing that surprised investors. The positives from today’s action was that the market didn’t sell-off further today, and the bulls showed some resiliency in fighting off the bearish efforts to send indexes lower. On the other hand we weren’t thrilled with the fact that we didn’t get more then what we got out of the market on a “no-news” day. The sectors that did rally were those considered a safe-haven in tough markets, such as utilities, and healthcare.

Let’s review the charts…

The NASDAQ once again led the way to the downside, being down over 1% at one point on the day. However, last ditch efforts saw the index close barely in the red. The rally from the bulls was impressive at the end of the day, but was unable to close above resistance levels.

The S&P had action that was a bit better than the NASDAQ. The index managed to hold its November lows, but we don’t believe it will take much in the way of news or economic reports for it to break those lows. At this point, the best thing for this index would be to put together a couple of solid days worth of gains, just to give the index some kind of breathing room, while the market continues to search for its ultimate direction.