Things are pretty quiet this morning, after yesterday’s solid market rebound. Futures are flat heading into the open with the Dow down 4 points, while the Nasdaq is down 3 points and the S&P is only down a half point.

We have a number of reports today with Retail Sales at 8:30am ET, which will be watch closely to see how the Christmas season went – which could create a strong reaction in either direction. The second report that will come out, and will only add more fuel to the fire is the weekly Jobless Claims which also comes out at 8:30am. There is also a report on business inventories that will be coming out at 10am.

On the earnings front, we have Intel (INTC) that will be announcing their earnings this morning which will no doubt play a huge role with market sentiment as well, and in particular will be a gauge on Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) my long position in my portfolio.

I will also be slightly increasing my stop-loss in DDM to 43.45

I have changed the daily trading ideas below by providing you with one stock pick for each category – the best of the screen results – so that you know exactly what I am thinking on the setups, rather than having to guess at it. In the days ahead, I’ll be coming out with a page instructing you in more detail how to trade these picks.

Here are Today’s Trading Ideas…

 

Potential Swing Trade (Long): Research in Motion (RIMM) – Filled the the gap up from mid-December, on light volume, Bullish candle put in with yesterday’s action, and a few ‘higher-highs’ and ‘higher-lows’ are in place.

Potential Swing Trade (Short): TD Ameritrade Holding (AMTD) – Volume continues to increase as selling increases and yesterday’s action constitutes a break in a minor support level. The best approach here, is to keep this stock in your short-setup watch-list, wait for a ‘dead-cat’ bounce, and then short it.

Stock Ready to Bounce: None

Stock Ready to Pullback: HealthSpring (HS) – Nice piercing candle pattern, and after a nice run-up, could easily see a pullback to the 18-18.50 level.

 

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