Probably no better title to describe today’s market action especially with what we saw in the later afternoon where the market erased about 5% of its losses to finish down only 3.9% in the S&P and 4.3% in the Nasdaq. My suspicion for the late day rally was probably in part because of last Monday’s similar sell-off that saw the following day finish with a 500 point rally in the Dow. As a result traders were jumping the gun in trying to get in ahead of that rally. Unfortunately, most of the rally might have been seen today with the 500 point rally off of its lows.
I also began to wonder as most traders out there probably were too, that the market is looking very ripe for Bernanke and Co. to put forth an interest rate cut, which ultimately does nothing for the long-term prospects, but can provide a short-term boost.
Finally I think we may have seen the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) at work pumping a lot of money in the markets to get the Dow back as close as possible to 10k. In any case, today’s rally at the end was not a mere fluke, and it will be interesting to see what kind of follow through we get tomorrow if any.
Here’s the Nasdaq and S&P charts…
