Oops, pushed the wrong button...

On options expiration it's hard to judge volume as it is generally high on options expiration, but there was no such event in ES and the trading volume there can be analyzed with surprising results.

In essence, ES didn't move much on the day at .40%, however volume was a standout. Today's ES volume was the lowest volume for a non-holiday trading day in nearly 5+ years!

AAPL looks like nearly the perfect pin,

Calls

 Looking at the calls, had the lows of yesterday around $486 given up another buck or so and closed at $485 an additional 38,396 calls would have expired worthless, but 55,567 put contracts would have been in the money (roughly, you have to calculate transaction costs, etc), but it was clearly in Wall Street's interest to pin AAPL right about where it closed.

Puts

AAPL's close in a very narrow range, an obvious options expiration pin.

AMAT which beat on earnings last night, gapped up big today gave everything back, a loss of -6.8% to close down 1.67% on the day on huge churning volume, talk about a head fake!

The 15 min 3C chart put in a huge leading negative divergence today, one of the biggest 1 day moves I've seen, it even went leading negative all the way out to the 60 min chart which is hard to do in a single day, so there was massive distribution in AMAT today and that after positive earnings and a great start to the day.

WWWW did something similar after good earnings last night,

 WWWW still managed a decent gain, but a horrible close, giving up 6.7% in intraday gains at the close on huge volume, leaving it looking like a big distribution/churning day as well.

3C never moved an inch to confirm the move up, this will likely end as a head fake move as well.

In fact a number of stocks that reported god earnings last night and were up in after market either gave back a substantial part of their gains today like CLD, or just closed down badly after being higher in last night's after hours, BIDU is one example that was up in after hours and closed down nearly -3.5% or even worse (Guidance is what it's all about-not what you did, but what will you do?) CBEY which was up in AH closed down an incredible -12.74% on volume!  I'm sure there were some very unhappy after hours buyers today, but the action is downright strange.

Our natural gas long play was one of the leading ETFs today, UNG up 4.28%

Biotech, GILD was thrashed today, down 14.25% on heavy volume. The industry group as a whole was hit pretty hard technically speaking doing some damage beyond the 2.42% loss.

***Post continued

DD also had a strange day giving up a lot of intraday gains...

DD gave up around 11% in intraday gains to close near the lows and form a ugly shooting star candle (bearish).
LIFE, NVDA, BIIB, LRCX, SPWR, JAZZ, BRCD, and MRVL also had a strangely ugly day.

Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few stocks with impressive gains today, but there were a strange number of stocks sporting early impressive gains that gave them up. Of course everything was strange today, from the fake US bonds to the ECB debt swap, the announcement out of Greece after the European close and on an op-ex day (which the market must pin and therefore is less likely to react) that they are pursuing retroactive CACs


In last night's post, I mentioned Dr. Copper's underperformance, that carried through today

The Copper Index lost 2.65% on heavy volume.

GLD was down a bit, but the gold miners GDX and junior miners GDXJ took a bit more punishment.

While TLT was virtually flat on the day, there was an afternoon move toward a flight to safety with the 3 day weekend.

The price volume relationships were all over the place from skewed positive to skewed negative and skewed much further then the market averages gains or losses would suggest. Furthermore the major averages, although none made big moves, were all over the place with the S&P and DOW up and the NASDAQ and Russell down.

I know op-ex can produce some unusual trade, but skimming through the chart, the trade was notably unusual.

Have a great weekend, I'll have some updates out and hopefully the swing template finished with a couple of great scans built in.