Financial Sector

I my previous "Technical Analysis" post I have talked about a possibility of correction and we had a small one which does not feet very well into the picture. It's difficult to believe that 2-day small move down on August 5-6, 2008 is the only correction we are going to see after the strong up-move we had in July.

The technical analysis by the end of the week is positive, however, I would not bet on the strong up move. I would rather prefer to see flat market that may turn into stronger than we saw correction down. Still, technical indicators on all 3 main indexes I track (S&P 500 DJI and Nasdaq 100) are positive at this moment and favor further up move.

Mine main concern is the financial sector. If you take a look at S&P Financials, Nasdaq Financial 100 and compare them to the technology and other indexes you will see that for many indexes up-move ended on July 23-27. Many of the indexes are in the sideway corridor since then.Dow Jones Utilities, Biotechnology index and Health Care Index could even be considered in the down-trend since July 27-30, 2009. So, we may say that technology, utilities and other market sectors became overbought and were ready for the correction down in the end of July. Yet, the financial sector continued its rally up and helped to hold the rest of the stock market from the correction. I consider that this is the main reason we did not see a strong correction.

Now, I would like to ask: "What will happen when the rally in financial sector becomes exhausted and financial sector become overbought at least in a short-term?" To answer on this question I would have to find out if the rest of the market is still overbought or the other market sectors become less overbought or even oversold over the last two weeks. If you say that the other sector indexes become oversold or less overbought during 2-week sideway move and shallow decline, than I would say that we may see up move wile financial companies have a correction or sideway trend. If you say that non-financial indexes are still overbought (at least in the short-term) then I would say we may see nice move down.

Personally, I did not see a strong correction on any of indexes (market sectors) and I did not see any volume surges during the price decline over the last two weeks. That is why it is difficult for me to assume that the market is ready for further up move.

Mine main point, beside of mine personal opinion on the market trend, was to show that in some cases it could be useful to take a look at wider range of the indexes. Especially it could be useful when you are in situation when you see Bearish signals, but instead you have sideway market or even modest advance. So, do not be narrow and do not focus on what you trade only. In some cases, when the stock you trade does not move along with yourtechnical analysis it could be not because your analysis is bad, but, because your stock is under an influence of other factors that you do not see yet.