Markets finished the week with a late selloff Friday with the S&P 500 lower by .5% and the Nasdaq by .4% after both spent the early afternoon in the green. For the week the Nasdaq rose .4% and the S&P 500 by .2%. The Nasdaq CLOSED in the lower half of its weekly range but is higher 8 of the last 10 weeks and I still feel the benchmark will make a run at all time highs before year end. The last 2 sessions finished inside Wednesdays strong 1.3% jump. YTD it is higher by 6.7%. The S&P 500 is higher 7 of the last 10 weeks and is still clinging to a yearly gain of 1% heading into November. The index fell 4 of 5 sessions this week but still looks solid as long as it stays above its 200 day SMA at 2060. Interesting to me was the move in some of the energy names as some heavyweights XOM and CVX reported today. They both gained marginally today but CVX commented that cap ex spending would fall each of the next 4 years with 2018 cut in half compared to this years numbers. Sure that might boost the price of crude, but one would have thought the service names would have suffered. Instead the OIH gained today and we look at the chart in depth below. Another name which may have its pulse on the health of the fracking situation is SLCA. This name has been slammed down 64% over the last one year period and 30% YTD. Each of its last 4 earnings reactions have been successively better with a loss of 1.4% on 2/25 (which did CLOSE at highs for the session) followed by gains of 2.3, 15.8 and 22.3% on 4/29, 7/29 and 10/28. No opinion on the name but it may be speaking that things are getting better below the surface, pun intended.

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