From the outset Sellers have had the upper hand this morning as they have pushed market direction lower. The report that the jobs numbers this Friday for March will be far below the expectations of 215,000 new jobs has given investors a reason to sell. This is typical of the market direction when it has reached another new all time high. Investors love to find reasons to sell.
The non-manufacturing index for March was also released lower than February’s reading as it came in at 54.4 which was also below estimates of 55.5 for March. This just added fuel to the selling fire.
Meanwhile US housing prices jumped by the largest amount in seven years, up 10.2 % marking 12 straight months of increases but right now investors are ignoring that number and indeed the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a non-government think-tank called for a recession by mid-2013 back in November 2012 and despite the rise in the stock market and economic data to the contrary, they are standing by their outlook. All this is assisting the selling today.
Gold continued its decline from yesterday and is pushing stocks like ABX Stock (Barrick Gold) lower. Meanwhile CLF Stock is bouncing back a bit higher today. Oil is down over $1.00 putting pressure on the energy sector.
This has caused a steep decline in the Toronto Stock Exchange where investors are selling most stocks including financials, miners and energy sectors. At one point the Toronto Stock Exchange was lower by 225 points or 1.76%. The performance of the Toronto Stock Exchange this year has been nothing short of terrible. While many analysts had called for the Toronto Stock Exchange to outperform the US indexes, this has not been the case with the TSX up barely 1% for the year to date.
Market Direction Action For Today
By 1:00 PM the market direction has pushed the S&P 500 down 0.77%. The 5 minute S&P 500 market direction chart below shows that the selling has been steady and permanent from the open today. This should not come as much of a surprise though considering the extremely overbought conditions coupled with the lackluster follow through by the market direction on every rise.
Yesterday the market direction pushed higher into the morning and fell back unable to hold the new highs.
market direction intraday on the S&P 500 for April 3 2013
Market Direction Outlook Intraday for April 3 2013
Intraday the market direction looks steady but sellers have the upper hand. Bulls though look like they are letting stock prices fall to them which is typical of bull markets.
The market direction may want to push back harder this afternoon to try to take the markets off the lows. Remember that historically the first week of April is poor and that could again be the case here. With the market direction sitting so high we are bound to have a correction in the near future but I have my bets on May not April. Those bets though are on instinct and conjecture only, nothing more.
Lately the market direction up has continually been followed by down days. There is no follow through on the markets as investors are content to buy one day and then sell the next. This see saw action won’t last and often the market direction will follow the easiest route which in this case will be lower. My outlook for the afternoon is for the selling to continue for a while longer and then the buyers to step in and try to push the market direction up slightly. I am not looking for a positive close as I do believe investors are trying to earn better returns here and that means buying into selling which is what we are seeing today so far.
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