Today was one of those annoying days where the indices covered up plenty of poor market under the surface.
Amazon (AMZN) , Alphabet (GOOGL) and Apple (AAPL) offset weakness in hundreds of other stocks and give the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) a fourth straight day of gains.
Breadth has been very weak lately. Today it was just about dead flat, but if you dig down deeper there were more 12-month lows than 12-month highs today. Also many momentum names, particularly in the biotechnology and oil sectors, were hit hard. I had a number of plays give back big chunks today such as Juipan (JP) which had been flying early in the week.
One complaint that grew quite loud today is how the market doesn't seem to care about the raft of various sentiment and other indicators that are at record levels. There are dozens of very compelling reasons why this market can't continue to do what it keeps doing, but they just don't matter. You can't navigate this market using contrary indicators of any type.
It is a story of two markets, with a small group of big caps driving the indices and the great bulk of remaining stocks trading with a negative bias. If you aren't in that small group of leaders you are probably not making much progress and to add insult to injury, the indices make it look like a very healthy market.
Have a good evening. I'll see you tomorrow.
