The DJIA and S&P 500 closed flat on Friday, tech shares’ weakness kept the NAS in slightly in the Red on the day.

On the Day: The DJIA gained 9.15 pts, or 0.08%, to close at 10,850.36,the S&P 500 closed up 0.86 pt, or 0.07%, at 1,166.59, and the NAS tallied up minus 2.28 pts, or 0.10%, to end the session at 2,395.13.

On the Week: Friday’s flat session closed a choppy week, the result being a weekly gain of +0.6% in S&P 500. Stocks were Bullish during the 1st part of the week, but Thursday saw a sharp intra-day reversal, and another intra-day pullback Friday, lessening a good portion of the week’s gains. Thursday’s weakness followed the Greek headlines and a disappointing bond auction, and Friday’s pullback took place on escalating geopolitical concerns after a South Korean naval ship sunk, but neither intra-day pullback was directly linked to any fundamental event, making the moves more Technically driven from my POV.

The NAS felt the action in Oracle Corp which retreated on technical selling off of a 9 year high a day after reporting quarterly results that beat the Street.

EuroZone leaders unveiled their plan to help Greece including that it would receive coordinated bi-lateral loans from other EuroZone countries and the International Monetary Fund if it faced severe difficulties, thus relieving uncertainty about the EU’s dealing with the problem, which has may have weighed on equities in recent weeks.

Friday the US Commerce Department said US GDP expanded at an annual rate of 5.6% in Q-4, not 5.9%, as it previously estimated, and the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s Surveys of US Consumers sentiment came in at a final March reading of 73.6, above expectations, unchanged from February.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) rose above 18 Friday, up 2 pts from last week’s 22 month low near 16. The rise in the VIX indicates increased expectations for near-term volatility. This modest rise in the VIX also comes ahead of this week’s full slate of economic data, which might cause some fluctuations in the market. Stay tuned…

Volume and Breadth: About 8.61B/shrs traded on the NYSE, the AMEX, and NAS, below last year’s estimated daily average of 9.65B/shrs. There were equal number of advancers and decliners on the NYSE, and on the NAS, only a few more stocks fell than rose.

Market Indexes Technical Analysis

Date	Symbol	Price	Technical Analysis	Support	Resistance
Mar-26-2010	QQQQ	48	Bullish (0.27)	46.61	48.01
Mar-26-2010	DIA	108.43	Neutral (0.14)	108.36	109.19
Mar-26-2010	SPY	116.58	Neutral (0.09)	115.83	116.81

Next week

The big economic event of next week, Friday’s (4/2) March employment report, will take place on Good Friday, a market closed holiday and the current expectation is for a +190K increase in Nonfarm Payrolls. Past to the week end employment report, data on Personal Income and Spending (Monday), Consumer Confidence (Tuesday), ADP Employment Change (Wednesday) and Weekly Jobless Claims and ISM (Thursday), will all be released earlier in the week.

In addition all of that economic data, there are a few earnings reports of interest this week. The bigger names include fertilizer company Mosaic (MOS) and Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIMM), which are both due out Wednesday after the close.

Stocks to Watch on Monday

Apple, Inc (APPL), Bank of America (BAC), ChevronTexaco Corporation (CVX), and Research In Motion (RIMM)

Read full report below:

Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Mar 29th, 2010and filed underEquities, Latest News, Limelight, Oil, USA.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site