Ken Tower Trading Quotations

We are at the top of a trading range. Everyone's willing to be bullish, but is the cash there to provide the energy the bulls need? Or is the December high the high-water mark? Dow 11,000 is one of the hooks the bulls will use to try and attract more money into the market.

We are at a major crossroads here. If we are unable to break out of this trading range to the upside soon, then there is a danger that we could quickly slide back down again to the lows.

In my experience the market doesn't remain trapped in that kind of narrow trading range for long. So expect the market to break out. But which way?

I'm left with the sense that this is a trading-range market, not a larger decline. The major averages are now coming down to their late August lows, which are presumably the low end of this trading range. There wasn't any real sign of a reversal yesterday, but support is nearby and downside leadership is poor.

The market has been stuck in a very tight trading range for a month. Yesterday's NYSE volume of just over a billion shares makes me nervous. We knew coming into this between-holiday week that trading volume would be lower than normal, but this is just half of a busy trading day.