Despite today's news flow, the trading range of the S&P 500 so far today is narrower than it has been the last two days. So far, neither the European Central Bank decision nor the James Comey testimony is having much impact. What is probably more important is interesting news from Alibaba (BABA) and Nordstrom (JWN) that is helping the bulls.
Another interesting aspect of the action today is that the Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) is strongly outperforming the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) . That is a reversal of the action we had for quite a while as the FAANG names ran straight up. It is probably a good sign for the market that small-caps are outperforming as that is an indication of a broader rally. Breadth isn't that great at about 3,300 gainers to 3,000 decliners but the performance in the small-cap indices is encouraging.
As I wrote in my opening post, I don't expect the market to react much to the Comey testimony. It is an interesting news event and provides good ratings for the news media but it really is meaningless to the market. Its only real importance is that it shows us how this market is not emotionally impacted by outside events.
If anything, these news events are almost always buy triggers of some sort. As I write I can see the buying picking up as it becomes clear that there is no news the market deems significant.
I used the early gap to sell Baozun (BZUN) and am looking at Sangamo Therapeutics (SGMO) , which is bounding off some support but I don't have a lot of new trades going right now. The overall market action is good but low volatility is preventing a lot of new trades.
