ChartSmarter Thursday Game Plan 8/13/15

Markets down early big to the tune of more than 1.5% turned around late morning and finished the day in the green. The S&P 500 which intraday was well below its 200 day SMA ended up CLOSING above it and rose .1%. The Nasdaq finished the session 100 handles of its own intraday low to end the day up .15%. In my humble opinion this type of frenzied behavior is more indicative of topping action and the long term double top in the tech benchmark is still in place until proven otherwise. Utilities and energy were the two best performing sectors and each rose by more than 1%. Oil equities have been trading independent of the price of crude itself and that could be a tell going forward. Of course the dollar situation is playing a major factor. The XLE is higher 4 of the last 5 sessions with all 4 CLOSING at their highs for the session and each coming in volume 50% better than the average daily trade. The XLU is looking for its 6th advancing week in its last 7 and today the ETF took out the 45 handle and its 200 day SMA. That 45 level was tough to CLOSE above with only 4 finishes prior to today dating back to February. It was repeatedly turned back there between the months of March and June. The rotation into energy and the utilities may be coming at the expense of some strong sectors that have been stout for sometime. Look at leader PANW in the software group which did record a nice reversal Wednesday along with the market but at intraday lows today was near the bear market threshold of 20% off recent all time highs. Below is the chart we published in a blog post on 7/30 discussing the round number theory.