ChartSmarter Friday Game Plan 10/17/14

Markets continued their wild ways Thursday, not quite to the degree of Wednesday, but the Nasdaq almost recaptured 100 handles for a second consecutive session. At the opening it was lower by 1.7% and recovered to finish UNCH and over the round 4200 handle. Going into Friday both benchmarks are still losing ground with the S&P 500 lower by 2.3% and the Nasdaq by 1.4%. Keep in mind both indexes at the opening were lower for 2014 as both now are showing minute gains just below 1% YTD. Energy once again led the way Thursday for a second day in a row, and we spoke yesterday of how that could be a negative, or perhaps this can be the start of some real repair to the beaten down group. Time will tell and opinions mean very little, price action is omnipotent. EOG has been a fine performer the last couple of sessions and that stand out behavior could be a tell going forward. Going into Friday it already has the largest weekly volume going back 3 years to the week ending 11/4/11. Enormous volume does have the tendency to mark both tops and bottoms. Additionally if you “looked left” on its weekly chart you would have noticed how crucial the round 80 handle was dating back to the weeks ending 8/9-8/16/13 where resistance was met. Support at that figure was seen last December. Know your technicals is the moral of the story.