Although the market is still solidly in the red and breadth is 1,150 gainers to nearly 4,300 losers, the bulls have been battling back steadily. They have AAPL into positive territory and GOOG continues to perform quite well.
Typically, when the market is making new intraday lows an hour or so into trading, the chances of a trend day to the downside are quite high. This time, it turned up after about 45 minutes and it has been making slow and steady gains since then. It is a little misleading because breadth is still so poor, but most issues are well off the lows and some key names are green.
From a big-picture perspective, there really isn't any justification for the market to bounce back quickly. Europe is not likely to see any major improvements overnight and there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty. There is a good chance that some decent earnings news will help out, but it is going to be stock specific and probably won't shift sentiment much. As I said this morning, Apple (AAPL) earnings are probably the most important report of the quarter and I suspect the market may be optimistic about its results.
I'm staying focused on the trades I mentioned in my prior post. I may add to Vringo (VRNG), Complete Genomics (GNOM) and a few others. I'm not very bullish about the overall market, but the small trades are working and that is what I'll focus on.
