A likely gap up from the open will leave bulls sweating the first 30-minutes of trading - hoping the inevitable fade won't produce a rout. The 20-day MAs need to be broken soon if this short term bounce in the market doesn't turn out to be just that.

With the indices struggling to break through their 20-day MAs, let alone the 50-day MAs, there are signs of a recovery in some leading Tech stocks . Sample list: GOOG , AAPL , CSCO , BIDU , MSFT , INTC , ORCL , AMAT , TXN , HPQ Stocks above 20-day MA ( 80% ): Apple ( AAPL ), Cisco ( CSCO ), Baidu ( BIDU ), Microsoft ( MSFT ), Intel ( INTC ), Oracle ( ORCL ), Applied Material ( AMAT ), Hewlett Packard ( HPQ ) Stocks above 50-day MA ( 40% ): Cisco ( CSCO ), Intel ( INTC ), Applied Materials ( AMAT ), Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ ) Stocks with a 20-day MA > 50-day MA ( 20% ): Applied Materials ( AMAT ), Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ ) Not the worst spread of strength for a weak market. Of the two intermediate bull trenders ( AMAT and HPQ ), Applied Materials ( AMAT ) has the best outlook going forward. Hewlett-Packard is struggling to hold its 200-day MA/40-week MA after 3 years of strength, so I would can this as a long side play (or maybe consider a January $70 2010 put going for $23.60 from the a...

Watching the Semiconductor Holders ( SMH ) with interest (over and above the long position I hold in them). Tuesday saw its second break of its 50-day MA over the past few weeks. The last one didn't hold so the question is will it do so now? Recent volume has been strong, suggesting there is more than retail trading going on here. I have redrawn a consolidation triangle, a break of which to the upside would confirm the 50-day MA crossover as bullish. If it can create some air to its 50-day MA it will have a good chance to mount a challenge of its 200-day MA once the inevitable back test appears. Trade my Stock Picks at

Last Friday's Jobs Report send bearish ripples through the market, but the real news for February wasn't the jobs report, it was the breakout in copper prices. Many will cite weakness in the dollar as the cause for the surge in commodity prices but this is too simplistic an argument. The following chart shows copper prices priced with respect to the Euro index: Why copper? As a key industrial metal for technology stocks (semiconductors in particular) it is an important measure for early economic expansion. From October through to early February demand for the metal declined as economic conditions deteriorated. However, February saw the start of a recovery over and above a simple decline in weakness for the dollar. If the copper:euro ratio can crack past 2.68 I reckon any chance of a recession will go kaput and it will mark a firm bottom for the markets. Markets discount economic conditions by 6-9 months, so Friday's data was priced in long before it was reported. Breadth ...

The past couple of days have seen a wealth of search traffic to this site for Howard Blackstein. Howard maintains a public list at Stockcharts.com which occasionally features in my weekly review. I did see I ranked 1st on Google for Howard (sorry Howard!) I suspect many are looking for this chart of his which is excellent:

Both the NYSE and Nasdaq McClellan Oscillator posted new all-time lows. I have annotated with black arrows the areas where lows at similar oscillator levels were signalled in the parent indices for the past 6 months. The indication is that this is a start of a zig-zag bottom before the rally can begin, although the indices are likely within 2% of a bottom. I suspect Tuesday will see an attempted rally before bears try and push it down again Wednesday. Futures are up as of 4.30am ET. A quiet news week would support such a zig-zag bottom before a trigger 'news event' can drive the market higher.

We are nearly half-way through March and it is on course to register another down month. Even during the worse of the 2000-2002 bear market it was rare to see more than 4 down months in a row - the worst run was 6-months which marked the very bottom of the market in 2002. Even in that instance, the low created after 4-months held as support for the subsequent 2-months. Will we see 2,202 hold as support?