Technical Analysis

Coming back to the technical analysis I may say that do far we have not seen a market reaction on the oversold indication seen on January 21-22, 2010.

The good news is that the S&P 500, DJI and many other indexes did not dropped strongly since then, by indicating a possibility that these indexes hit the bottom of the correction. If you check the S&P 500 financial sector index you will see that this index is at its low (support) level which was already tested in the middle of August 2009, beginning of September 2009, beginning of November 2009 and December 2009. For many indexes (like in case with S&P Financial Index) the current level is very strong support level and the fact that these indexes had difficulties in following the Nasdaq 100 last week decline is a good sign.

The bad news is that the Nasdaq 100 indeed declined. I have seen many times when the down move or up move was started by one index and then it was picked up by the rest of the market. The fact that the Nasdaq 100 declined strongly and indexes ignored the oversold signals on January 21-22, 2010 tells that we still could wait for another wave of panic selling.

From this point of view I would say that the odds of the end of the current correction are 50/50 and I would say that a lot depends if the rest indexes will get into selloff scared by this week's selloff in the Nasdaq 100 sector.

So far the technical analysis of the charts suggests possibility of the further decline. However, there are many signals that suggest oversold condition and possible support. Some of them are:

1. Low negative MVO on all indexes which would indicate big bearish volume surges and strong panic selling in all market sectors - this usually leads to the shift in the supply/demand balance and reversal. It worth mentioning that the daily volume in the Nasdaq 100 sector on January 29, 2010 is the strongest daily volume in this sector since April 20, 2009.

2. Low Advance/Decline readings on major indexes would suggest the oversold condition and possibility of the reversal as well.

3. High volatility. If you check the ATR(9) on the Nasdaq 100 1-year chart you will see that the volatility on this index is at its March 2009 level (bottom of the stock market crash). On the S&P 500 and DJI indexes volatility have climbed to the beginning of November 2009 level (support of the October's correction).

I would say that the oversold signals are very strong and we may see strong bounce up. However it does not mean that we will have it tomorrow. What I want to say is that the stock market is predisposed for a recovery move up, however it still could slide lower. I may say only that because of the high volatility I would expect to see sudden and strong reversal and it could be tomorrow or it could be in a week. In this case I would only recommend monitoring shorter-term charts as well as some lagging indicators that would confirm a reversal.