By InTheMoneyStocks.com on February 23rd, 2010 11:34am Eastern Time
It looks as if the markets are once again ready to growl. Following two weeks of quiet upside trading off the February 5th, 2010 pivot low, and a Monday that saw some of the lightest volume of 2010, the markets got crushed today! The PowerShares QQQ Trust, Series 1 (ETF) (NASDAQ:QQQQ) is trading down 1.30% while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:SPY) are lower by just under 1.00%.
The markets started with a small gap lower on the back of a stronger dollar. Concern overseas again pushing the dollar slightly higher. After the open, the markets made an attempt at going positive as they surged to gap fill, break even. Then all hell broke loose. The Consumer Confidence number was released at 10:00am ET and shocked the markets. Consumer Confidence was reported at 46 in the month of February after last months 56.5. The market had been expecting a number of 55 for February. This was a major shock and the markets dropped like a rock.
For those of you following our analysis at InTheMoneyStocks.com, we had alerted that the market was near or at a top here and to be accumulating ETF's on the short side of the market. Some of those accumulated over th last few days were iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term F (NYSE:VXX), Direxion Daily Emr Mkts Bear 3x Shs(ETF) (NYSE:EDZ), ProShares UltraShort S&P500 (ETF) (NYSE:SDS). All these soared today when the market dropped and we have taken some money off the table. These were all short term swings which is generally our featured style.
In other news, Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) reported solid quarterly earnings. Even with the down move in the markets, the stock is holding up nicely. It is trading higher by 1.5%. Strength today is being shown in Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) which is higher by 1.36% even in the down market. The biggest losers today are in the NASDAQ. Technology stocks like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) are under pressure. Apple is down 1.4% on the day and the NASDAQ is lower by 1.35%.
Gareth Soloway
Chief Market Strategist
InTheMoneyStocks.com
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