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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (33531)	11/11/1998 5:38:00 PM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 94695

INSIGHT- Nasdaq ripe for a pullback as Dow falters Wednesday November 11, 4:54 pm Eastern Time By Huw Jones NEW YORK, Nov 11 (Reuters) - The Nasdaq looks vulnerable to a pullback after its strong run up, with a further advance made difficult by the Dow's reluctance to recross the key psychological 9000 point mark, technicians said on Wednesday. ''My sense is that it's had a very good move, but a pause is likely, probably after Dell reports,'' said Peter Green, a technical analyst at Gruntal & Co. Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq:DELL - news) reports after the close of trading on Thursday. On Wednesday, the Nasdaq rallied 24 points in opening trade after chip bellwether Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news) announced late Tuesday that its fourth quarter will be better than expected but late in the session the market gave back gains to close down on the day. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed down 3 points at 1862, after a pulled back from profit-taking in the Internet sector and a weary Dow which closed down 40 points at 8824, partly on worries the Fed may not cut interest rates next week. ''The Nasdaq is in dire need of a pullback and somewhere you are going to get it,'' said Gary Kaltbaum, a chartist at J.W. Charles. The Nasdaq's sharp gains began well before Intel's good news, and were also fueled at the start of this week by frenzied buying in Internet-related stocks. Two of the big four Nasdaq Composite stocks, Dell and Intel, have pushed to new lifetime highs, with the other two, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq:CSCO - news), not too far off. The Nasdaq 100 index hit a new lifetime session high of 1504.51, closing up 3 points at 1480.71 for the day, and is now up 49 percent for the year. The Composite index is still 7 percent away from its lifetime session high, but is up 18.5 percent for the year reversing the downdraft from July. By comparison, the Dow industrials are up 11 percent for the year. Chartists worry that the Dow industrials have failed to regain the 9000 level and have begun faltering, and this, in turn, could rob the Nasdaq of some of its momentum. ''The market is probably getting close to a correction because when you see flat action elsewhere and speculative action in one group such as technology, it normally is a prelude to some kind of action,'' said Ricky Harrington, a technical analyst at Interstate/Johnson Lane. Gruntal's Green said the Dow industrial average needed to break above 9000 points to pull the broader market higher, including the Nasdaq, but this could be difficult while the Dow transportation average was still some 28 percent off its highs. Many technicians believe that an advance in the industrials can only be sustained if there is a similar advance in the transportations. Still, Kaltbaum said the Nasdaq may, after all, have a clear run to its lifetime session high of 2028 of July this year because unlike the early summer semiconductor and disk drive stocks and not just the computer makers are strong. ''Add them all up and you may have a pretty decent move here,'' Kaltbaum said. The trend in the Nasdaq was still up, said Elaine Yager, chartist at Herzog, Heine, Geduld. ''I think the Nasdaq is stymied by its own resistance and not the Dow,'' she said. ''For this thing to pullback would not be a surprise, but it would be a surprise getting under 1720.''