Extreme Breadth

Published June 5th, 2006 in Market Internals, Technical Analysis Tags: breadth, Nasdaq, NDX, volatility.

The market has been shaking like a wet dog. We’ve now gone 7 continuous days with very extreme breadth - alternating from negative to positive and back again:

For the Nasdaq, the picture looks very similar. As I mentioned before, this is what happens at inflection points. The market needs to do this to make you and everyone else thoroughly dizzy so that when it takes off, it has as much fuel (read: as many people leaning the wrong way) as possible.

Looking at the long-term intraday chart for the Nasdaq 100, we can see that for all the shaking going on, we still have a clear up trend in effect:

The question now is whether the string of higher lows and higher highs will continue. Will the 1570 level hold? I think the probability of it holding is higher than not. But we’ll see soon enough.

breadth, Nasdaq, NDX, volatility

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3 Responses to “Extreme Breadth”

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1 Lawrence Kwan Jun 6th, 2006 at 11:39 pm

I agree with you that the market exhibits high volatility on an inter-day basis, back-to-back. One day’s 20 point advance on S&P futures can be gone within 2 trading days, which is not usual. Nevertheless, I do not have the insight to predict how the market will act and the duration of the scenario.

Send me an email or drop me a comment anytime. =)
2 Babak Jun 7th, 2006 at 8:47 pm

“Nevertheless, I do not have the insight to predict how the market will act and the duration of the scenario.”

Neither do I. But as you notice, I don’t let it stop me from pretending like I know what I’m talking about