On Leave

Hi guys, I'll be on leave for a while due to exams. Will update again during the month of May!

Good luck and trade carefully!

Dow Briefly Pops Above 11,000; Chevron Gains

DOW again tested the 11,000 resistance. I thought there will be a slight correction but that's really a slight dip (where's the correction??). It seems that investors are lapping up stocks once that dip came. However it seems that low volume movement seems to be the new trend and seems no one dared to short the market. I'm not complaining if this new trend is very sustainable.

Probably the reason of a low volume is that there is still fear of the repeat of 2007 run up of stocks. You should know what happened after that year which is the fall of Lehman Brothers. This year the fear is that there is another fall - Greece. Hence retail investors are still on the sidelines.

Next week will be the start of earnings!

MONDAY: Earnings from Alcoa
TUESDAY: Trade balance; import/export prices; Fed's Lacker speaks; earnings from Intel
WEDNESDAY: Weekly mortgage apps; CPI; government's retail-sales report; Fed's Pianalto, Lacker, Warsh & Fisher speak; business inventories, crude inventories; beige book; earnings from JPMorgan Chase
THURSDAY: Taxes due; Empire state manufacturing survey; industrial production; Philly Fed report; Fed's Lacker, Bullard & Lockhart speak; housing-market index; earnings from Google, AMD
FRIDAY: State unemployment rates; housing starts; Fed's Warsh speaks; consumer sentiment; earnings from Bank of America, GE, Mattel & Gannett

11,000 resistance

11,000 is the resistance we are seeing now. Seems like Greece problems are still there.

April

We are in April now, which is said to be one of the traditionally bullish month. Q2 results are in season now so we shall see if stocks can still go bullish. On Friday, Gov announced that non-farm payrolls increased by 162,000 in March. So we may see another rise on Monday. Are jobless situation improving? I think still waits to be seen as people will digest it during weekends.

The payrolls increase was the largest since March 2007. About 48,000 temporary workers for the decennial census were hired last month, less than some anticipated, while private payrolls jumped 123,000.

"The real surprise is the low number of census and temp workers, slightly more than half of the 162,000 gain in March. Traders and investors will see this as a good sign once they digest the figures over the weekend because permanent hiring was much better than anticipated," said Schoenberger.

Chart looks like a consolidation still.

STI broke resistance. http://cclor.blogspot.com/2010/04/sti-broke-major-resistance.html