The market still seems to be heading south, but there’s some hope for the future.  Some stalwarts like GOOG and BAC disappointed last week, but with INTC and VMW surprising, we may see techs bounce back sooner rather than later.  A bunch of other big techs will be releasing their earnings soon, including a little company named Apple, so we’ll see how what the feeling is heading into the summer.  Keep a close eye on the top of your watch list since the recent pullback made some enticing entry points on these earnings surprise breakouts.

Strong buying volume late in the day made the good day much better.  BAC says they won’t need anymore taxpayer money, so can we please have the original bailout money back now that they’re doing so well?   Banks keep feeding us news that they’re getting better, but until we see the quarterly reports and writedowns, it’s tough for me to believe them.  We’ve already seen them grossly underestimate the weakness in the housing market before, so hold the party until we get the official reports.   The earnings in April should be quite interesting…

A lot has happened over the weekend again.  This time it’s the collapse of Lehman Brothers (LEH) and Merrill Lynch (MER).  LEH is gone, but MER will likely be bought by BAC.  This should be another exciting week (more so for the bears of course).

The trading day was fairly quiet most of the day.  BAC started the banks off well after reporting a better than expected profit of 72 cents, still down 41% from last year though.  AAPL had their call after the market close and they reported a great quarter, but a weak outlook leaving their shares currently trading down 10% in the after hours.  They have a history of under-promising and over-delivering though, so I’m seeing this as a potential good opportunity to get in at a discount if it keeps dropping down to support. 

I separated the volume today to highlight the decline, since it’s been hiding behind the falling price recently.  A move in one direction with declining volume typically means it’s just a correction, and that the prevailing trend will resume in the near future.  We’ll have to see how deep the next drop goes.