Markets resumed their recent downtrends after a day off Monday that benefitted from first of the month positive bias. It was the Nasdaq which has been consistently underperforming which lived up to that billing slipping 1.1% giving back all of Mondays advance and then some. The benchmark is now lower 8 of the last 9 sessions and keep in mind AAPL, its largest component, rose nearly 2% today. To its credit some names from the semiconductor group reacted to earnings Tuesday and the reports were well received as IDTI and TSRA jumped 5.2 and 4.5% respectively. Overnight economic data from China was blamed today and that put a bruising on the energy and materials sectors as they declined 2.6 and 3% respectively. Not surprisingly the defensive staples and utilities behaved the best, although they lost ground. Healthcare showed modest “relative strength” down .5% and looking at some recent peers in the group one has to think that the selling will soon continue. Names like HRC, GILD, HOLX, ILMN, XON, UTHR, CAH, LPNT, MOH, PCRX, PRXL, and RMD have all been going through rough sledding as of late. Banks were hit particularly hard Tuesday as the XLF slid 1.3%. So many charts have begun to look promising with recent handles put on current cup bases, but some of growing a little long in the tooth. Speaking of names putting handles on present cup bases below we look at the chart of NVRO which was highlighted in our Tuesday 4/26 Game Plan. Another example of waiting for PRICE confirmation and how stocks in general will have issues with the round numbers.

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