End of Day Ramp

As I showed in the TICK Index, today's end of day ramp job did not have broad market participation which means, as I mentioned this morning, that a close higher has little to do with any market strength and is just an attempt to juice the returns for Q1 results for fund's prospectus. The averages that saw the most juicing EOD were the Q's and the SPY

 The Dow was largely lateral and a little toppy looking the last two hours so no need to look any further there.


 The NASDAQ was juiced and the prime candidate with 20% or so weight on the index (about the same as the bottom 50 NASDAQ 100 stocks combined) is AAPL, that's an easy one.

And AAPL is confirmed.

The SPY was juiced as well. The top 10 components or the top 5% of the index accounts for 20% of the market cap. So I looked at those.

XOM is top dog, but had nothing to do with the juicing as you can see.

 CSCO @ #8 did

T @ #3 did

 And BAC @ #6 did, despite it closing down, they needed to move the average @ EOD and you can see BAC was one of the mover EOD.

As far as the Price/volume relationship, which I was very interested in, it came in VERY dominant (there are 4 relationships possible) with well over half of the stocks in each of the above averages in that dominant relationship. The dominant relationship, believe it or not is actually the most bearish of the 4 possible combinations, PRICE UP/VOLUME DOWN.  So again, we have evidence that today's move lacked market breadth or participation making the move extremely suspect. Also a relationship that dominant and negative can induce a 1-day overbought event, although tomorrow is still part of the quarter.

I think after Wednesday (after the prospectuses are locked in and the gains reported) we will see some significant realignment of portfolios, this is in large part based on apparent de-leveraging yesterday as we saw that very heavy volume and selling on the last day to adjust their portfolios.

In the NASDAQ, the Ratio of Advancers vs Decliners deteriorated throughout the melt up

This is not what you expect from a strong move, this is what you expect with a price/volume relationship like today's.

In another breadth chart, as the market rises, you expect to see more new highs, not less. This again shows a lack of participation or a lack of breath.

All in all, I think what today was is pretty clear, not a move of strength in the market, but rather a move to keep redemptions from hitting hedge funds en masse once they release their quarterly results.