Comments From the Trading Desk 02.25.10

Desk Color – jitters and nervousness all around.  The tape def. remains better to sell and the bias is to sell rallies vs. buying dips.  Volumes/conviction levels are higher on sell-offs vs. rallies.  That said, there isn’t a lot of confidence in either direction.  Recall back on Wed when WDC sold off hard (and took the rest of the drives w/it) when it said that seasonality was returning to tech (sellers/shorts were very quick to react to the mere hint of bad news).  Conversely, today shorts were just as quick to turn around and cover (the Apple stock split speculation appeared to be enough to spark a big covering trade).  There wasn’t a lot of “real money” buying on the move up; a lot of the activity occurring in indices vs. single stocks.