Selling Smacks Wall Street

Markets: Dow: 12,210 (-395) / S&P: 1,361 (-75) / Nasdaq: 2,475 (-43)

Brutal day on Wall Street with Dow losing almost 400 points. Selling was spurred by the monthly jobs report showing unemployment rising from 5.0% to 5.5%. Oil prices spiked $10.75 with the dollar falling on the jobs report, Israel's threats to Iran and technical momentum trading.

I was looking for SOL and SOLF to break out of consolidations this morning. The trades triggered very early and were difficult to catch if you weren't prepared. The prepared trader went after these trades off the bat. With high oil it was surprising to see these two breakouts fail and fall to previous levels. Both of these companies closed on their respective lows leading me to believe that today's action could have been a breakout failure and they will eventually breakdown.

V was a good afternoon short but the consumer credit number had an adverse impact causing a sharp spike in price shaking out the shorts, myself included. Once the initial short squeeze subsided though, V traded back to its lows, and then through its lows.

Markets sustained a lot of technical damage today and we just may see a new leg down. Today's action is typically not followed by major buying interest for some time.