ChartSmarter Thursday Game Plan 12/3/15

Markets which began mildly positive on hump day ended bearishly near session lows. The Nasdaq recorded its second bearish engulfing candle in the last 4 days as it sits just 2% from all time highs. It fell .6%. The Nasdaq is looking to register its third week of outperforming the S&P 500 with a flat finish thus far this week and the S&P 500 down .5%. The S&P 500 lost 1.1% and also recorded a bearish engulfing day. The late selling after the Yellen speech and the reported gun attack sank the indexes. We have heard all the bullish talk of how a first day in December gain can lead to very solid gains in the month but today put a damper on that thesis. Of course this is just one session and the path to those historical December advances is a bump one, so lets not read to much into Wednesdays behavior. Investors Intelligence data has bullish advisors nearing the 50% level and rising which can be a negative although the index traded near a 60 handle between January and April this year. Bearish advisers are on the decline, which is bearish, below the 30% mark. All 10 of the major S&P 500 sector groups were in the red with energy and utilities being hit the hardest. Oil dropped 4% today finishing near the round 40 number and the benchmarks followed its lead. For the most part they have traded in sympathy with some brief occasions otherwise. The transports which are affected by energy costs via the freight plays saw a casualty in CHRW today. It dropped more than 6% Wednesday. The strong software group had a name demonstrate why one must wait for breakouts to CLOSE above trigger points. Case in point GWRE which we highlighted in our Thursday 10/29 Game Plan with a 60.96 cup base trigger. It screamed above early on but failed miserably at holding on. It finished off more than 5 handles from intraday highs.