ChartSmarter Tuesday Game Plan 12/1/15

Markets fell Monday to start the week with a very brief venture into positive territory early on only losing steam as the day progressed. The S&P 500 surrendered .5% and Nasdaq lost .4% and they recorded bearish engulfing patterns as well. The S&P 500 has traded very taut however with the last 8 sessions have CLOSES within 9 handles of each other. Energy was the winner of the day, but the losers were more prevalent and lets focus on those. Healthcare was soft Monday dropping 1%. Leading names like REGN fell 3.3%. Others like RDUS and AGIO lost in the 7% neighborhood range. Of course retail lagged today with the incessant Black Friday chatter following the holiday weekend. It was not surprising to see laggards perform shaky Monday with the likes of ZUMZ LULU GES EXPR URBN ASNA AEO and COLM all retreating between 5-10%, but again when the generals that have been keeping the sector and in some cases overall markets afloat are fragile, then it is time to be cautious. One in particular is AMZN. The stock was upgraded this morning by RJF and it finished 16 handles off intraday highs. Of course that is not a great deal with a stock well over the 600 mark, but the action was questionable. Another leader that has been looking sluggish is ULTA. Below is the chart of ULTA and exactly how it was presented in our Friday 11/20 Game Plan. Today it recorded an ugly bearish engulfing candle CLOSING 7 handles off intraday highs in elevated trade. Many bears looking at this name are probably saying bulls are trying to put as much “lipstick on this pig” as possible, pun intended.