Stocks Pull Back On Taper Uncertainty

Stocks pulled back Monday as the normal song and dance came from Fed officials who are trying to walk back the "QE forever" mantra Bernanke set forth with his surprise actions last Wednesday. While stocks reacted, it seems very unlikely that any action will be taken at the next meeting since there is no news conference associated with it, or the December meeting since it is in the heart of holiday season. The S&P 500 fell 0.47% and the NASDAQ 0.25%. The big news of the day was in the smartphone market, where a bid came in for troubled Blackberry (BBRY) and Apple (AAPL) announced strong sales for its newest iPhone. Many leading momentum names however had quite difficult sessions.

New York Fed Reserve President William Dudley said that the central bank still needed to push hard against threats to the economic recovery. Dudley defended the Fed's decision last week not to trim its aggressive bond-buying, arguing that any changes to the quantitative easing program mush be based on the most recent measures of economic health.

Both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ came down to their 10 day moving averages today. They did bounce intraday but it was not anything tremendous. If this market is as resilient as it has been all year, later today we will probably see a big gap up to start the day for no particular reason causing consternation for those underinvested. The S&P 500 fell back below its breakout level which is usually a cause for concern but we will see if it means anything in the QE market.


We can always find negative divergences but a few that are not really supporting this rally are the retreat in oil, and the fact the financial sector is not acting great. The financial ETF never reached August highs and yesterday rolled back over to fall below the 50 day moving average.


BlackBerry (BBRY) was bid up a bit but was hit so hard Friday it barely registered.

BlackBerry closed higher after the smarpthone maker said it would be acquired by Canadian insurance company Fairfax Financial, for $9 a share, in a deal totaling $4.7 billion dollars. Last week, the troubled smartphone maker's shares plunged nearly 17 percent after the company announced preliminary second-quarter results that disappointed estimates and cut approximately 40 percent of its workforce. Meanwhile, at least five brokerages slashed their price targets on the company's stock.

Apple Inc, (AAPL) on the other hand had a very nice day due to nice iPhone sales figures.

Apple spiked higher after the tech giant announced that sales for its new iPhone had set a record, with consumers snapping up a record 9 million smartphones within the first few days of its launch. In addition, the company said there were more than 200 million downloads of its new iOS 7 platform.


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