Reno, I'm surprised that you, of all people, are asking this since you seemed to be among the few prepared for that: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=906780#post906780 I had the impression that you were also giving little validity to what happened in the past two weeks, when prices kept going up on low volume during Thanksgiving week and before that, during options expiration.
Thanks everyone...Lots of great responses. But I think the original question has been mostly ignored. The question was not why did the S&P, the Dow and the Financials go down significantly today... My question was.... why did the Russell 2000, the Nasdaq and the Semis NOT follow the S&P's lead?? The Russell 2000 especially tends to be very volatile. If today was part of an overall short-term correction, I would expect it to get crushed today with the S&P losing 8 points. But the Nasdaq, Russell 2000 and Semis were all up today. Huh?? I don't get it.. So which is it? Are the Dow, S&P and Financials divergent from the short term trend? Can we expect them to rise soon? Or are the Russell 2000, Nasdaq and Semis divergent? Can we expect them to fall soon? This is a point of interest to me because I mainly day trade the Russell 2000 futures, not the S&P cheers,
Today's action must be taken with a grain of salt. The NYSE handheld computers were down intermittently and some important functions were completely unavailable all day. We and many other firms around us on the floor turned away many orders because we were so swamped trying to do things on paper. Other customers gave up in frustration because it was taking so long to get them their reports of what they bought or sold. I wouldn't draw too many hard and fast conclusions from today.
you don't need machines to sell any market --- just make the phone call!!! "helllooo -- mya naame isa Borat anda i wana selling alla ov mya stock eh riiet noowa pleees"!!!!!!