2:05pm (EST)
The bulls impressive showing from last week got the market into positive territory for the year but today's action has pushed all of the major indexes back into the red.
The charts from our weekend homework showed possible further weakness following Friday's pullback but the first waves of support are holding. We mentioned if the bulls could get through today and this week without too much damage, April could be setting up for a special run.
Biotech stocks are once again leading the bear parade as investors throw out the babies with the bathwater. We delved into this topic briefly and covered some of the major stocks to watch as we said the selling pressure could continue.
Momentum stocks are also taking hits and the VIX is back above 15.
It is too early to start nibbling at current levels as we will need to watch the close but there are a number of new trades we like on this pullback. There are a number of easy, simple clues we said to watch for this week that could determine near-term direction and while today's losses look nasty, the indexes are still in a trading range that has been developing since the beginning of the month.
Trading ranges work themselves out and they can either be short or long-term in nature. We believe this one will settle out soon with the good possibility of another upside surprise. However, we are also watching lower levels of support in case they don't hold as we will want to add put positions to play a further downslide.
The Dow is down 26 points to 16,276 while the S&P 500 lower by 10 points to 1,856. The Nasdaq is getting hammered for 57 points to 4,219 and the Russell 2000 is declining 17 points to 1,176.
We could be busy in the final hour of trading but we wanted to get our midday update out before putting on new trades as we have another Profit Alert. Again, we want to see how trading holds up over the next 30-45 minutes and we are doing some additional chart work on some short ideas so stay locked-and-loaded.