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Tomi Kilgore
July 8, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EDT · Recommend (7) · Post:
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By Tomi Kilgore
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- After the longest string of losses in nearly two years for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, one might think investors should be happy with any advance. Some gains, however, can end up doing more harm than good.
It's easy for chart watchers to point out where strong resistance should be, but the only way to know for sure is for the market to test it. The Dow /quotes/comstock/10w!i:dji/delayed (DJIA 10,075, +56.84, +0.57%) did just that, and failed pretty miserably.
The Dow rose as much as 172 points early Tuesday to an intraday high of 9,858, right in the middle of the range of 9,830 to 9,880 defined by the early-February and early-May lows. The Dow then pulled back sharply to close at 9/743, or 115 points below the day's high. The Dow may have ended its losing streak at seven sessions, but all the rally did was prove that resistance is very strong, and the notion that bears are still very much in control.
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The question is this: Do bulls still have the energy needed to lift the Dow by triple digits to take another shot at what has proven to be strong resistance? The lack of underlying technical support and the fact that the yield on the 10-year Treasury note also failed at resistance suggests the answer: not yet.
What bulls need to sustain a bounce is some form of bullish technical divergence, which is when some underlying technical indicators start rising while the index is still falling. That occurs when the pace of declines starts to slow enough to give the appearance of relative strength. It takes more than just stabilization for that to happen, however, it also takes time.
A similar technical failure in the Treasury market indicates time is something the stock market doesn't have.
While concerns over European sovereign debt and a slowdown in China have contributed to the Dow's weakness since April, the Dow's recent slide seems more the result of increased worries about the U.S. economy and the rising risk of deflation. The drop in the 10-year Treasury note yield below 3% supports that view. So until the 10-year yield starts to show some signs of bottoming, Wall Street investors should expect any bounce in stocks to fade rather quickly.
To be supportive of stocks, the 10-year yield first needs to close above resistance at the gap in the charts between the June 29 intraday high of 3.001% and the June 28 low of 3.03%. The yield rose as much as 1.4 basis points to a high of 2.993% in intraday trading on Tuesday, before reversing course to close down 4.7 basis points at 2.932%. Unlike the Dow, the yield couldn't even threaten resistance before fading fast.
If by chance bulls can get the Dow above 9,880, resistance at 9,950 to 10,000 should be just as strong. If, however, the Dow falls below Friday's low of 9,614, it could be a while before Treasurys and stocks again test resistance up to 3.03% and 9,880, respectively.
Tomi Kilgore writes Taking Stock, a global column that gives insightful analysis about equity-related topics around the world. This column originally appeared on Dow Jones Newswires.
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12:20 p.m. Today12:20 p.m. July 8, 2010 | Comments: 4
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