You already know most traders are on cruise control as they wait to hear what Fed Chairman Jay Powell says on Friday at the Jackson Hole symposium. That aside, the bulls managed to hold their ground on Wednesday with the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) , SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) and iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) spending most of the regular session above the day's volume-weighted average price (VWAP). Unfortunately, such a weak response from buyers, with the ETFs trading at or beneath their short-term moving averages, makes it look increasingly likely that SPY, QQQ and IWM all have a date with their 50-day simple moving averages even if a bounce is in the cards following the Jackson Hole event.
Away from the indexes, Wednesday's after-hour session was as busy with tech earnings. Nvidia (NVDA) , Salesforce (CRM) and Splunk (SPLK) disappointed, while Snowflake (SNOW) and Autodesk (ADSK) delivered decent results. On the stock side of things, NVDA, CRM and SPLK all crashed through their 50-day SMAs during the after-hours session, with CRM falling especially hard. On the upside, SNOW came through with a monster after-hours gain of more than 7%.
It is a rare occurrence that we can say something positive about the cannabis space, so let's focus on that for a moment.
On Aug. 15, I mentioned that if you pulled out your magnifying glass you would see the AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF (MSOS) had finally started closing above its 50-day SMA. Much to my surprise, buyers finally showed up during Wednesday's session and drove the stock above its downtrend line on halfway decent volume.
If I'm going to complain about anything, it's that giant area of supply between $13.50 and $14.75. Barring an incredible surge of buying, I suspect it will take quite a bit of work to chew through that supply zone from May.
From a trading perspective, we don't want to see much trading under $12.25, and from a proper breakout perspective, we need to see demand surge -- again -- above $13.
