More of the Same

The markets continued in the range bound levels we have been talking about (hope we are not boring you). The S&P 500 rallied until it was slightly above our range high of 850; then fell to a low above our low of the range 825 (actual high 851.85, low 829.18). We see more of the same until there is a catalyst to break one way or another...this may be the Friday Payroll numbers

Some of our trading ideas continue to be: long RIMM (up in a down market again); short WMT (3 cents off a 52 week low yesterday) but WMT may get a bump if the sales data is higher-just watch for too much discounting, UPS (the “intraday levels from yesterday worked like a champ, wish they all worked that well), FDX (down 1.58). A couple other names mentioned this week; WYNN (sell signal on 2/2/09 and we suggested if it broke the levels to short it...down 2.59 yesterday); DRYS & FSYS also mentioned new sell, but to watch for a break first and they have not broken yet.

Non-Farm Payroll numbers on Friday morning (from Barry Ritholtz)
We are likely to see another ugly NFP report on Friday. The early data points ain’t pretty:

Layoffs: Challenger job layoffs surged to 242k in January — the highest level for a month since 2002. The monthly rise was +75k and year over year, the increase in layoffs was 165k.

ADP Report: 522k jobs lost in January, consistent with consensus expectations. ( Barry also mentioned that the ADP report has been unreliable) .

I am looking for another 500k plus job loss (potentially as high as 700k) and unemployment ticking up to 7.8%



posted by Peter Greene