More Than Just a Red Apple

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We have a nasty gap down this morning on the Nasdaq Composite Index daily chart, among others, that appears to be in no rush to get filled. Across the board, the markets are sending a loud and clear “risk off” signal. My only current position is that short AAPL trade that I have discussed in several other posts, which may or may not see me locking in some nice gains today (I am plus 22 points on the trade). At first, I thought there might be a chance that the selling could be contained to the high momentum leaders since 2009, such as AAPL AMZN CRM GMCR NFLX PCLN. However, we are even seeing old tech names like IBM INTC MSFT get hit today too. So, there are no sacred cows.

At this point I am focused on not trying to catch a falling knife, which is what this market appears to have become. I know this is a holiday week with Thanksgiving on Thursday, but my sense is that too many traders are looking for the market to give them an easy way out. An ECB intervention is rumored to come every five minutes or so, and I refuse to play the game of trying to front run such widely-monitored news.

Besides, from my perspective the biggest “news” of today is the gap lower on the Nasdaq which could easily be a breakaway gap, meaning it will not get filled. That may or may not materialize, but I am seeing plenty of eagerness to buy the dip which has me looking to do anything but.