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Closing Technical Market Comments
Fri Jul 11th 2003
LUCKY 7/11

http://www.thetechtrader.com/closing/index.php?HTTP_REFERER=(none)

By Harry Boxer, The Technical Trader (www.thetechtrader.com)
7/11 was a lucky day for the market and the markets were up, but they traveled an interesting route. Pre-opening indicators were up, and the market gapped up and ran up to the highs for the session on the Nasdaq 100 early in the day. The S&P 500 ended up making a higher high later.

But essentially after the morning rally, the market went sideways for three hours in a very tight pattern. With about two hours to go, with no rally having materialized, the indices pilled down quickly. They filled the gap on the Nasdaq 100 and tested the morning pullback lows on the S&P 500 and held there. Then the market came back in the last hour or so, snapping back up toward resistance, where it closed.

Net on the day the Dow was up 83 ½ to just under 9120. The S&P 500 was up 9 ½ to 998. The Nasdaq Composite was up 18 to nearly 1734, and the Nasdaq 100 was up around 12 at 1280. The SOX Index was barely ahead today, up .43, and yet the Nasdaq did well today, which was interesting.

Technicals turned solidly in the last hour and were up about 2 to 1 on both exchanges on advance-declines. Up/down volume was also a little bit better than 2 to 1 on both exchanges. NYSE volume was under 1.2 billion, and Nasdaq volume was about 1.45 billion. So it was fairly light volume for a Friday afternoon in the summer, but not unexpected.

On my personal board there was a mix of gainers and losers, about 60/40 to the plus side, mostly high-tech stocks that were mixed today. Some of the chip stocks did not do that well today. Emulex was down, Broadcom was barely ahead, QLogic was down, and the SMH was up only .18. So it was a very mixed day in the chip sector.

However, the Internet stocks did well, with the Asian Internet stocks, in particular, rebounding. CHINA was up 1.05, ASIA was up nearly a half, and several others were firm today. In addition, low-priced Charter up 92 cents, Exult up 78, and TIVO up 33 cents were some of the leaders in the low-priced sector.

Stepping back and reviewing the index chart patterns, the market had come down sharply yesterday, rebounded today, and held support on a couple occasions. So from a technical standpoint the market did not follow through to the downside, which is positive for the bulls, and yesterday’s lows were right at support.

Thus, until we break those support levels, which are 1260 NDX and 985 or so S&P 500, the chances of the rally extending itself are still pretty good.

Good trading!

Harry