What Did The Stock Market Do Today?

As I've mentioned in posts on this site, the first question you need to ask during your stock market daily routine is "what did the stock market do today?" Part of the CANSLIM strategy is to only investing in an market when the general market indexes indicate an uptrend. This is why you need to keep a close eye on it each day. With the current outlook "market in confirmed uptrend", what's important now is to watch for distribution days. A distribution day is one in which the stock market closes lower on higher volume. Add enough of these days up and it reverses the trend.

The S&P 500 closed slightly higher today on lower volume. The volume was significantly lower than the on the most recent trading days. This seems to indicate some stalling action but we will see. It did not qualify as a distribution day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed in a similar fashion and the results were the same.

The New York Stock Exchange closed lower on lower volume and the NASDAQ showed strength by closing higher on higher volume.

Since their were no distribution days recorded, the market outlook remained unchanged according to the IBD.

To help figure out how to analyze what the market does each day, refer to the market indexes, the IBD TV feature on investors.com and the Big Picture column on page one each day.

What I recommend you do is look at the indexes and decide for yourself what happened. Then confirm you thoughts by using the tools I mentioned. Doing this everyday as part of your stock market investing routine will help you get a real handle on it.

Good luck!