Wednesday's optimistic action has carried over to this morning, but there are signs of nervousness, and many traders are ready to hit the eject button at the first sign of negative news. We already had one jiggle on comments from a congressman that they are "far from a deal." Speaker John Boehner is scheduled to hold a press conference at 11:30 a.m. EST and the market is losing momentum in front of that event.
Overall, we have good breadth again at about 3-to-1 positive. Most sectors are green but there is a little weakness in homebuilders and retailers. Apple (AAPL), Priceline (PCLN), Google (GOOG) and a number of big-caps are leading the action, which is probably a function of traders looking for liquid names that they can exit quickly should they need to.
I've been playing some technical buys like PolyOne (POL), Parexel (PRXL) and YY Inc. (YY), but I'm being very aggressive at protecting gains when I have them. The market action is decent, but the headline risk is extremely high and I can't imagine that we are going to have a fiscal-cliff deal without tough negotiations first.
