Something Is Missing

As we saw late this morning the breaking news of a new anthrax case at NBC News in New York caused the markets to reverse drastically. It appears that the markets are still very much influenced by news, and like Tim Truebenbach said in his latest column "At this point, it continues to be important to eye things conservatively. The market appears to be all right, but the underlying leadership may be saying otherwise." Ditto with this guy right here! No putting my face in the fire, even though the markets fared pretty well for the week.

Among the stocks exhibiting a nice technical pattern is ironically a semiconductor company. Microsemi Corp (MSCC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) has been scaling a higher up the right side off a multi-week base. Lets see how this company holds up in the near term, who knows this one may be one of the leaders we have been looking for.

On the short side, Insight Communications (ICCI | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) looks vulnerable as Media-Cable TV stocks continue to perform weak. The company has an extremely high debt level (254%) and has been showing losses over the last 4 quarters. It appears that the stock is forming an inverted cup with handle.

Turning our attention to the ETF arena, the WEBS-Sweden Benchmark (EWD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) tacked on 4.5%.

The Broadband HOLDRs (BDH | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) moved higher 3.1% as it pulls off from its lows.

And the WEBS-Austria (EWO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) climbed 1.2%.

In the red was the Internet Infrastructure HOLDRs (IIH | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) which slid 4.3% as it met resistance at its 50 day moving average.

The WEBS-Hong Kong Benchmark (EWH | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) closed 3.7% lower.

And the Cyclical/Transportation Select Sector (XLY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) fell 2.7%

Remember that all securities are risky. In any trade, you should always reduce your risk by adjusting position size and placing open protective stops where you will sell your long or cover your short in case the market turns against you. For an introduction to combining price stops with position sizing, see Loren's lesson, Risky Business.

Have a great weekend and be safe.

Greg