Briefing.com: Updated: 19-Nov-02 - General Commentary - Techs suffered a modest setback in Monday's session, with most of the declines coming in the last couple of hours. Late retreat is a reversal of recent pattern and is worth monitoring in future sessions. If we start to see increased selling into the close it will be a sign that the recovery has finally run out of gas (at least short-term).
No serious damage done by the 1.2% decline, though Nasdaq's failure to hold above the key 1423 area could prompt some additional technical selling off the open on Tuesday. Initial support is in the 1350 area. Traders will watch to see if this floor holds before recommitting to the long-side.
Pullback driven by the larger cap stocks, with losses seen in IBM (IBM 79.18 -0.83), Qualcomm (QCOM 38.39 -1.05), Microsoft (MSFT 55.85 -0.84), Oracle (ORCL 10.25 -0.46), Cisco (CSCO 13.91 -0.17), Applied Materials (AMAT 15.33 -0.50), KLA-Tencor (KLAC 37.43 -0.59) and Intel (INTC 18.55 -0.25)... Net stocks provided one of few areas of strength, as evidenced by gains in eBay (EBAY 67.64 +1.67), Amazon.com (AMZN 22.42 +0.21), Doubleclick (DCLK 6.98 +0.09), Yahoo! (YHOO 17.76 +0.31), TMP Worldwide (TMPW 13.04 +0.15) and Hotels.com (ROOM 66.56 +1.91).
If pullback remains contained, Nasdaq won't waste much time before reloading and retesting the pivotal 1423 area... Decisive break of this ceiling on a closing basis would position index for a run at the 1480 area.
Robert Walberg |
