Dave's Daily: Caution, Data Ahead

Afternoon selling in the U.S. markets was likely due to caution ahead of jobless claims and unemployment data coming Thursday and Friday. Health care ETFs suffered amid worry about another ObamaCare bill.
By Dave Fry ,

Dave's Daily

By Dave Fry, founder and publisher of

ETF Digest

and author of the best-selling book

Create Your Own ETF Hedge Fund.

March 3, 2010

Most economic data Wednesday (ADP Employment, ISM Services and the Fed's Beige Book) came in as expected and markets rallied early.  But like Tuesday, investors decided to do some afternoon selling particularly after the Beige Book was released at 2 PM.  One would assume this action is due to some caution ahead of Jobless Claims and Unemployment data Thursday and Friday.

The early positive momentum was primarily due to an easing of fears regarding Greece.  Critics generally approved of the government's budget plan despite widespread street protests.  On this news the dollar fell against the euro and commodity prices moved higher.   

Volume remains light while breadth was positive once again.

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Investors are on tip-toes awaiting the end of week filled with important economic data.  At the same time, we're short-term overbought making new positions riskier especially in front of important data.

Wednesday's Fed Beige Book mentioned "snow" six times I'm told in their report to rationalize why things weren't better.

Thursday features Jobless Claims, Factory Orders and Pending Home Sales--all market moving data.  We're being set-up for another "snow-job" Thursday and Friday since the Fed and others have made it a point to feature it as a weight on data.  If the headline data is poor, no matter, it's what Main Street will focus on rather than the weather. 

Let's see what happens.  You can follow our pithy comments on

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Disclaimer:  Among other issues the ETF Digest maintains positions in: MVV, TNA, QLD, IBB, UCO, DGP, UUP and XPP.

The charts and comments are only the author's view of market activity and aren't recommendations to buy or sell any security.  Market sectors and related ETFs are selected based on his opinion as to their importance in providing the viewer a comprehensive summary of market conditions for the featured period.  Chart annotations aren't predictive of any future market action rather they only demonstrate the author's opinion as to a range of possibilities going forward. More detailed information, including actionable alerts, are available to subscribers at

www.etfdigest.com

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Dave Fry is founder and publisher of

ETF Digest

, Dave's Daily blog and the best-selling book author of

Create Your Own ETF Hedge Fund, A DIY Strategy for Private Wealth Management

, published by Wiley Finance in 2008. A detailed bio is here:

Dave Fry.

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