Volatile Market Might be Pounding Out a Bottom

Editor’s Note:  David Brown is on vacation.  Scott Martindale, Sabrient’s senior managing director, is this week’s guest editor.   Scott handles institutional sales & marketing for Sabrient. He also writes the weekly Sector Detector and manages the virtual Select Opportunity Portfolio.

Last week, the stock market gave us epic swings. Bears came out with predictions of global economic meltdown as the market tanked, and then bulls came out trumpeting once-in-a-generation valuations when the market bounced.

Though the Federal government avoided a debt default with an eleventh hour deal for raising the debt ceiling, investors are apparently unimpressed—especially given the uninspiring economic reports. This week, the Commerce Department reported that personal spending in June fell for the first time in two years. This was coupled with the weak ISM manufacturing report and last Friday’s weak GDP report.

Needless to say, the Federal debt ceiling issue is now dominating the news wires, and although investors have so far been confident that some deal would be reached, the late hour is starting to spook some. After being given a glimmer of hope last week, we learned after last Friday’s close that the debt debates had fallen apart, leaving investors squirming about what this critical week ahead of us would bring.

As the market has shown renewed strength, Technology and Energy have been leaders. Apple (AAPL) gave a stellar earnings report and hit another record high. IBM (IBM) also chipped in this week with a great report. However, Yahoo!