Not A Crash But Something.

The tone of the market was negative today as the advance/decline line finished lower, almost every sector fell and volume was above average which may be an indicator of increased investor anxiety were mixed into the close. You have to go back to at least 2004 and in many cases earlier to find instances where stocks have experienced such a "woosh" down in such a short period of time. In fact the NASDAQ has now traded down for the past 8 days. You have to go back 12 years to find a similar occurance! We've yet to see the "crash" anecdotes or the 2000-2003 bear market comparisons. My guess is that they show up this weekend, maybe in something like Barron's.

Still the market is trying to tell us something here. I've my own ideas on that subject which I will start to cover next week. (I'm off on business tomorrow afternoon and will not have a chance to post again until the first of the week). One of the things as I've alluded to is that I think it is possible that a change of leadership is in the offing for stocks. We'll get a better clue about that when stocks finally rally (and they will go up again sometime I promise).

In the short term future economic data may be interpreted to mean more rate hikes and weak data to mean an economic slowdown is on the way. However, we should be open to the possibility that any continuation of the recent commodity decline will result in an end to the string of recent rate hikes.

In the short run I think that the major averages are very close to a tradable bottom and will work under that assumption for next week.