(I knew I was sleep-blogging last night/ this morning when I mentioned the Dow futures were up 80…) The market started off strong which we had a feeling it would but sold-off shortly after the opening bell. A lot of people are looking at the market losing steam but I like the fact that the Dow is making higher highs and higher lows. What we do know is that volatility is still here but if you are bullish you have to like today’s action. The Dow made a high of 8,834 and spent most of the day drifting lower until the bulls stepped in around 2pm.. As a result, the Dow bounced off its session low of 8,639 and closed at 8,739, down 24 points. Rising oil prices may have been a factor in today’s session but the real problem was the government’s auction of $20 billion on 10-year Treasury Notes. There were plenty of buyers all right, but the Notes had a higher yield than the market had anticipated. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note jumped to 3.95% from 3.86%. I know some of you may not know what “basis points” are but it basically means 10-year Notes have soared nearly 80 basis points in less than one month. That is huge. As a result, Financial stocks got hit and fell an average of 1.6% across the board. I have mentioned to watch the Financial stocks in the new trading service and here in the blog. I’m not ready to short them because they could do something when earnings season rolls around. Right now many of them seem to be stuck in a trading range. Yes, the TARP news is baked into some of the share prices but I think some of these firms could report some blowout numbers come 2Q. Wall Street also didn’t like the fact that the trade deficit widened to $29.2 billion in April from $28.5 billion in March. However, I have been saying the market has done a great job of shaking off some of the bad economic news that has been coming in and we saw that today once again. We will have to see how the rest of the week unfolds but there still seems to be a bullish tone to the market. If we can get Dow 9,000…it would be a back breaker for the bears. Rick Rouse Rick@TheOptionInvestor.com]]>