THE STREET

I have been reading thestreet.com since its inception in the 1990's when Jim Cramer proclaimed the company would eventually be the standard for financial journalism and overtake the WSJ as the dominant player. I don't think it has worked out quite as Jim expected but from time to time there is some valuable information.

Today, Alan Farley, a technical trader who has been writing at realmoney.com for a long time penned a column that echoes my thoughts on daytrading. Alan identifies "tells" for the trading day and he specifically mentions market breadth as offering the best signal of strength or weakness for the day. He suggests buying midday pullbacks when the advances minus declines l are plus 1,000 on each of the exchanges and when upside volume is better than 3:1.

I also like to watch the NAZ/SPX futures and the action in the BKX/XBD/SMH and the IWM. It will not be often that everything lines up exactly but when it does it is generally a good time to press to the upside on pullbacks. Also, watch the trend of the TICKS. Today it has rarely "ticked" below the ZERO line.

Today is one of those days where I expect we ramp back up to the highs of the day as just about every tell is lined up. The one fly in the ointment, the QQQQ, which has hit its high near 11:00 EST and hasn't been back since. But its always something.