Another, crazy week is behind. We saw strong slides and we saw strong recoveries. The feeling that the stock market is manipulated was following me the whole week - the indexes declined even when the majority of stocks were in advance - on one day we had a news on Government attempt to give a help to financial institution on the next day we hear that these institution do not need such help. How many else surprises wait for us?

Overall, despite all negative pressure, all negative news the Nasdaq 100 index slide down only 5 points (0.3%) over the week. Keep in mind that the Nasdaq 100 index is a basket of 100 non financial companies and as a result less affected by the financial sector than the S&P 500 index and DJI index. As a result of the week the DOW index lost 188 points (1.7%) and the S&P 500 index lost 23 points (1.9%).

The question is what will the next week bring to us? Will the financial companies be able to push the stock market deeper down despite the heavily oversold stage? We saw such attempts during this week, yet we saw that the rest of the stock market tried to move the market up (we witnessed a few attempts of strong recoveries).

Last week (see my previous "Stock Market Crash" post), based on the technical analysis of the 60-day chart I have made an assumption about possibility of the strong recovery. Yet, the market is still down. Intraday market crashes, when the Nasdaq 100 index dropped for 3% (on Friday July 10), make traders believe that the market still going to crush even more, and I think not a lot of traders accept the same strong recovery later on the same day as a sign of the oversold market. I think that majority of traders still believe that the market will go further down and they do not dream even about a small recovery. Maybe they are right, maybe the stock market will be lower, yet I do not think that it’s going to be "tomorrow". As I mentioned before, I see the extremely high oversold levels and on my opinion we on the edge of the strong recovery. Even if the market tends to be lower, before, I believe it has to release some oversold power in a recovery movement.

If we compare the October 2007 – January 2008 stock market crash, with current May - July 2008 down trend we will see different price behaviors. If during the Oct-Jan crash the indexes dropped for 2% then they continued to drop even further. However, during the current down trend very often we witness the scenario when the indexes drop down for 2-3% and then move up in strong recovery within a single session (especially over the last two weeks). It tells me that the market is driven down by a few negative companies (like Fannie and Freddie) while the rest of the market tries to recover from the heavily oversold levels. That is why I have put a question above for how long the financial companies are able to push the stock market deeper down despite the heavily oversold stage.

In order to review my position about the current market, this week, I decided to take a look at yearly index charts to see the longer term tendency of the stock market.

Chart #1: Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJI) 1 year chart - SBV(10), MACD(20,40,20), Stochastics(20,2), MVO(5,25,3)



Chart #2: S&P 500 Index 1 year chart - SBV(10), MACD(20,40,20), Stochastics(20,2), MVO(5,25,3)
 

Chart #2: Nasdaq 100 Index 1 year chart - SBV(10), MACD(20,40,20), Stochastics(20,2), MVO(5,25,3)