Complete Friday Game Plan

Markets staged a very strong day Thursday as volatility continues to reign supreme. Today was an up day, and although volume did not cooperate the move has to be respected. The S&P 500 rallied 1.5%, while the Nasdaq tacked on 1.3%. With back to back 6% lower moves in the VXX, and the Nikkei 6% drop overnight, the market looked set for a devilish, numeric pun intended, whoosh to the downside, and the S&P 500 looking at a 4th straight down day (something it has not done all year), and a possible breach of it 50 day SMA. More importantly some of the leading stocks I closely follow retested prior breakout triggers and held (see below). We had some more merger news in the strong performing media group, as GCI announced a bid for BLC. Interesting that the acquirer GCI rose more than the acquiree BLC, by a 34 to 28% advance. A little concerning was some of the biggest movers today have been some of the lagging sectors. Most notably the builders. RYL advanced more than 7%, DHI by more than 5%, after finding 200 day SMA support.