Before the Open (Aug 19)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The world is green. Every market in Asia/Pacific and Europe is up. Futures here in the States suggest a moderate gap up open for the cash market. This comes off two up days that were strong early and weak into the closes.
Over the last week I’ve gone over things I’d like to see happen before I’ll believe the current move up will be anything but a minor low-volume counter move within a mini downtrend. The small caps need to start leading – they have the last couple days. The banks need to move up as do the semis. Below are the banks and semis charts. If the market continues up but these charts lag, the move up will be capped.


Otherwise I still think we’re in no-man’s land. I’d like to see a little more weakness to cycle the indicators down to oversold levels, but the charts quickly remind me we’ve had several instances where free falls were abruptly halted and vertical rallies followed. Anything goes and for now I continues to focus on day trades while the charts set up. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers