No ratings

Happy hump-day, one and all, though we're actually past the mid-point of this particular trading week than we usually are on a Wednesday. Remember, the market's closed on Friday in observance of Good Friday, so there's only tomorrow left in the trading week. And, I've got a feeling plenty of folks are going to make it a four day weekend by taking tomorrow off too. It's the first time all year long the weather's been forecasted to be decent during a holiday weekend, and odds are good that traders are looking to maximize their fun-in-the-sun time. That means tomorrow could be a rather lethargic day.

Wednesday sure wasn't lethargic for any of you who are also subscribers to the Elite Opportunity service, however. Congrats are in order for those folks, as they just today booked gains on QualCOMM (QCOM), Corning (GLW) and Myriad Genetics (MYGN) of roughly 27%, 24%, and 32%, respectively. Those are solid wins in any environment, but they're phenomenal gains in the current, choppy environment.

No ratings

Welcome back, everyone. We trust you had a good weekend.

Before I forget - or in case I forget - we won't be publishing on Friday because the exchanges will be closed in observance of Good Friday. (Boy, did Easter fall late this year or what?) Also, while it's tough to forget, if you haven't filed your taxes yet, don't forget they have to be postmarked by tomorrow. Ugh.

Now, with all housekeeping stuff out of the way...

No ratings

As we warned you yesterday, with just a little more weakness the rhetoric was going to become a lot more bearish. The media didn't disappoint, publishing a flurry of "correction" stories today that painted an amazingly grim picture. Stifel's Chad Morganlander says we could see a correction on the order of 5% to 7% in the coming months. Marc Faber believes we'll see a crash like the one we saw in 1987 sometime this year. Merrill Lynch said stocks could lose as much as 15% of their value by this fall. Yikes.

Yeah, well, I'll make two points that I've made for you guys before: (1) The media loves to tall splashy, scary stories because that's good for traffic and/or ratings, and (2) crashes rally come when they're as anticipated as one seems to be now. And, thirdly (though not quite as meaningful as points #1 and #2), some of these guys need to put their correction predictions into perspective - a dip of 5% to 7% isn't that big of a deal. Heck, a 15% correction isn't necessarily odd.

No ratings

Let's call a spade a spade... today was ugly. The bears drove the S&P 500 below a key technical support line today that they couldn't pull it under on Monday or Tuesday. For what it's worth though, there's that small part of me that's thinking after a 2% drubbing for the S&P 500 and a 3% blow to the NASDAQ, aren't we due for a dead-cat bounce?

The chart below tells the story. The S&P 500's floor at 1840 - not to mention its 50-day moving average line - were obliterated today. This is the first real lower low we've seen since early February. With little else to stop the bleeding now, the bears now have the best opening they've had in weeks.

No ratings

Hi folks. How was your Fed-meeting-minutes Wednesday? That's right - today was the day the details of the Federal Reserve's recent (March) meeting were released, and though there's usually some market tension heading into the official unveiling, there was a little more stress than usual surrounding the event today.

Maybe that's because it was only Janet Yellen's second meeting as Fed chairperson and investors are still trying to figure her out. Or, maybe it was because traders were concerned she was actually serious about her seemingly-hawkish stance the last time she spoke on the status of the economy. More specifically, the last we heard, it sounded like the Federal Reserve was aiming to kill its QE efforts before the end of the year.