Today's Markets

Not a good day for economic news. Although the heads of JPM and the NY Fed came out swinging to defend the Fed's help with the Bear Stearns deal it still reminds people the fifth largest investment bank was a breath away from bankruptcy. In addition, jobless claims spiked to a tw year high -- even Google is laying people off. Not only did Bernanke use the "R" word recently, even the Treasury Secretary is saying it may not be a great quarter. And we also learned that consumer's late payments are at the highest level since 1992. But we did learn that Lehman underwrote it's own CLO (dubbed freedom) to help it deal with a ton of loans on the books.



The SPYs dropped at the beginning, but formed a triangle base. The broke the upper resistance and moved through the 50 SMA, rallying until a bit after lunch. Then the market traded in a downward sloping pennant formation until the close. Prices did bounce off the 200 SMA at the end of trading.



The QQQQs formed a triangle starting at the end of yesterday, then rallied hard until they also formed a pennant formation. Note they also bounced off the 200 SMA.



The IWMs were in a downward sloping pennant pattern from yesterday, but broke higher with the other two averages. They traded down for the rest of the day, but notice the high volume spike on the last 5-minute bar.