The market is doing a very poor job of building on Thursday's reversal. Quite often a day like yesterday creates anxiety among underinvested bulls and overly aggressive bears but that doesn't seem to be the case today.
Breadth is still running positive as small-caps show a little relative strength but weakness in big-cap names including Action Alerts PLUS holdings Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL) as well as Growth Seeker holding Amazon (AMZN) is causing problems for the senior indices. We also have poor action in biotechnology again and precious metals have slowed after a good start. I'm hearing talk that weakness in biotechnology may reflect worries about the latest political polling, which favors Democrats likely in favor of drug-price controls.
It is a summer Friday so there isn't a lot of news flow but the issue seems to be that the buy algorithms have already left for the Hamptons. We just aren't seeing any bids. There may also be some worries about the Brexit issue again over the weekend.
Overall this isn't the sort of upbeat follow-through we've grown to expect after a reversal like we had Thursday. We are still holding above yesterdays' lows but hopes of a V-shaped bounce are dying quickly.
I see too much weakness in individual stocks and that is preventing me from doing much. Small names such as Cincinnati Bell (CBB) and Control4 (CTRL) are interesting but pullbacks like we are seeing in BioTelemetry (BEAT) and Five9 (FIVN) are of concern. Those are positions I'd like to build but they currently have no support.
If this action continues it is going to be extremely thin this afternoon and that can be dangerous if you don't allow positions some room.
