Sir, few positive impacts might be:
Some traders taking an extended vacation prior and after the 4th, reducing the downside pressure professional "hedgers" (shorters?) usually exercise when exuberance overflows. Historically the few days before after the fourth have an upside bias. An upward bias or seasonal effect is often present with all "long weekends" holidays.
A lull in negative preannouncements (well, recently, these preannouncements have been used as an excuse to mark them up, see last week AMCC and PMCS) before the actual gory details come to the fore starting in the second or third week of the month.
The fact that the NYSE ticked above 1000 early Friday (1200) indicates this market has some momentum in it, the late day decline might have taken care of the excess enthusiasm, sufficiently. Of course, such a high reading is a "double edged" sword, it also often indicates a temporary top (and thus the decline late in the day before the Naz snafu?).
Of course, if you asked me for a list of negative catalysts, I could probably oblige you on that as well (g).
Last, yesterday's volume exceeded 2 Billions by a nice margin, yet was far enough from an excessive 3 billions to allow for more volume expansion, and as you know, prices follow volume...
Zeev |
