Trader’s Narrative

So after warning you that we were headed into some shaky grounds on Monday morning (premarket) when the S&P 500 stood above 1540. And after the market fell to around 1510, saying that we had still some more room to the downside… Let’s see if I can continue this streak.

Lowry’s 90/90
No question today’s market action was severe. No doubt it was a Lowry’s “90/90″ day - where 90% of the points and 90% of the volume are on the downside. From the 3417 issues on the NYSE, 3144 of them closed down. That’s 92% to be exact. Meanwhile, volume on the NYSE was 95% to the downside.

Can you say e-x-t-r-e-m-e?

This is the sort of panicked, thorough selling that market inflection points are made of.

New Highs New Lows
This week I mentioned a few indicators that I was watching. The Nasdaq’s New Highs/New Lows indicator told me that we had more room to fall as it was still above 10. Today’s devastating decline took this indicator to just below, at 9.39. At these levels we can start to seriously look for a bottom.

Today, the New High/New Low Ratio also fell to extreme oversold levels. According to these two indicators, the number of 52-week lows (compared to highs) presents a compelling argument to go long.

Leaving aside market internals, a simple glance at the chart of the S&P 500 gives us a hint that the market may find its footing here. The February 2007 top which previously acted as resistance but can now become support:

Usually I leave volume off my charts but check out the volume today! Notice how in previous market inflection points, the surge in volume coupled with a wide range dark candle tends to signal a change in trend?

Most common indicators swung to extremes: The volatility index (VIX) spiked above 23 and met my request to go a tad higher. And the put/call ratio also spiked to a bullish extreme.

But the indicator of market health that I give a lot of weight to still hasn’t reached the kind of wash-out extreme that I’d like to see:

I’d prefer to see a real washout that would be a reading of 20-something. Similar charts for other percentage of stocks above 50 day moving average for indices like the Nasdaq 100 are also low but not low enough yet.

We could still bounce from here, especially as a gap up open tomorrow morning. That’s why right after 3pm I bought a bit of Ultra S%P 500 Proshares (SSO). The last hour of trading is known as “contra-hour” for good reason

What I’m most interested in seeing is how sentiment reacts to this recent decline in the markets. If we have real fear (increase in bearish sentiment), then we are probably all clear for another leg up in the bull market. But if people are complacent and do not flinch, things could get ugly.