Almost all of the great bottoms in recent history have a retest within a few days or weeks ('74, '87, '98, '00 etc). There are some anomolies like sept 21st that went straight up. But retests wash out the remaining weak holders and they often cut through the previous low ('74, '98 for example) to suck more shorts in. If the VIX gets back into the mid 50's, or if the DOW bounces on key support of 7400, it's a high probability trade on the long side. August calls will look great.
the only thing I am pretty confident about is that it will retest the lows of today, maybe even this week.
after today the market is full of people praying for another chance to buy at levels of the lows today.usually the market doesnt give what everyone wants.
No retest? Naz came within 20 points of yesterdays low today. The DOW couldn't even close in positive territory. Not very inspiring action.
"Naz came within 20 points of yesterdays low today. The DOW couldn't even close in positive territory. Not very inspiring action." i dont know whats going to happen but after a 500 point gain for the dow to close down only 7 points after being -200 intra day is impressive.in fact without the drag of tech MSFT INTC the dow and s&p would have been up.
I think you have to set Sept. 11-21 apart - not sure if you can call that a "bottom," in the traditional sense anyway. It was caused by conditions almost completely exterior to the market, an impulsive panic and emotion on a scale not seen in a generation or longer in the US, several days complete trade halt, etc. OTOH, those things might just have accelerated the pace temporarily and given us a glimpse of the then future (our present)...