Dec 22nd Market Commentary

So my sister got me one of those Easybuttons from Staples and I decided that I would give it a try this weekend. I decided that I was not going to do much, I'd rely on that Easybutton instead, and I'm sad to report nothing got done. Begads! Foiled again in my attempts to make something from while putting in nothing.

I wish there was an easy button, in the stock market and in life- but there just is not. So many traders, it seems, want to find that Easybutton were someone else does the work, but they keep the profits and can tell friends how much money they are taking "out of the market". These people tend to move from one expensive system to the next, from one newsletter to the next and one course to the next, always convinced that EasyMoney is just around the corner and that knowledge, experience and hard work in the stock market can be purchased for $5000, or $1000 or $500 or 3 easy installments of $19.95. Well, this weekend the easybutton didn't work for me, and even though its a nice fantasy to have, there is no easy button, either in life or the stock market. You simply have to put in the time to get the desired result.

Volume was much higher across the board on Friday with quadruple witching. The major indexes continued to have resistance in the area of the 50 day moving average on Friday as concerns about the rally build.
The amount of time that the indexes have spent under the moving average without being able to break higher is for me starting to be cause for concern. I have closed my long trade in the QQQQ and have now started to focus more on relative weakness setups instead of buying opportunities.

They were not very hard to find this weekend with a number of stocks showing poor strength over the last few weeks as the market rallied. Tip: Stocks that do not rally with the major indexes during a rally are often the names that see the largest declines when the market turns negative.

Names showing relative weakness include AAPL, MSFT, BA, BAC, IP, BNI and many others. On the upside about the only setup I found remotely interesting was in TSYS.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to contact me.