GARY ON THE MARKETS

We think we said it all last time here as the markets fell under some serious distribution this past week. Shorter term, anything is possible. The short term is the trees. Maybe we get a bounce here as the market felt a little sold out on Friday. We also saw a spike in put buying which often turns the tide near term. That said, there has been some technical damage done. A quick glance at the chart we posted shows a crash in the amount of names trading above the 50 day moving average. That in itself is not a death knell for the market but it doesn’t help.

A few other things we are watching:

The GERMAN DAX. It has been leading up and down for a while…and finished below the 200 day moving average this past week.

The REGIONAL BANKS. They actually look headed into a bear market in here. This is important to watch as financials matter. It is also less than thrilling seeing names like JPM,C and BAC rolling over here.

The OILS. They have been leading and now many have cracked.

The continued underperformance by the SMALL CAPS as the RUSSELL and SMALL CAP 600 trade below the 200 day average while the NDX and NASDAQ are still above the 50 day.

We’ll know a lot more by how and if the market bounces in here. Otherwise, it remains a time to go slow.