Markets remained in the green for the entire session Friday to conclude a tumultuous week. The Nasdaq led today with a decent gain of .6% and the Dow and S&P 500 and Russell 2000 were all higher by .1%. The Nasdaq did record a bullish harami candle but was unable to recapture its 50 day SMA, but a rapid recovery of that line next week would frustrate the bears as they have yet to witness and type of follow through to the downside. The Nasdaq did indeed fall for a third consecutive week and although each week did CLOSE in the lower half of the weekly range, a bearish sign, each successive week brought lower volume than the previous one. The tech rich index is now 3% off recent all time highs, but price action does feel heavy. For the week the Nasdaq lost 1.5%, the S&P 500 by 1.4% and the Dow by 1.1%. Looking at the weekly sector returns it was a clear win for the defensive groups as the staples and the utilities behaved best. On the downside energy fell 2% as the XLE is lower 7 of the last 10 days and now off by 18% from recent 52 week highs (one has to look no further than PTEN now lower by 43% from recent 52 week highs and down 10 of the last 12 weeks). The XLF was an interesting space to look at as in was unable to CLOSE above a cup base trigger of 25.40, the 8/4 session finished the day at 25.39 and the three days from 8/4-8 all were at or north of the breakout trigger intraday. One name in the group that looks decent technically is BSMX from our neighbor to the south and below is how is was looked at in our Friday Game Plan this week.

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