This is more a broad market note rather than a MRK one. If you haven't been solely trading (or holding) large caps the last few weeks you've probably noticed a lot of choppy trading. The major indices have been hiding a lot of sloppy & choppy trade. You can see it a bit by comparing IWM to SPY.

Based on the alerts I was getting on my watchlists today I couldn't believe the indices were basically flat for the day. Lots of names got crushed today. That's what got me to look at MRK. I saw on the General Market Overview that "Expansion Breakdown" appeared 5x more than normal today. When I clicked through to view the charts breaking down there were a lot of healthcare names on the list. Many of those were killing it just a few weeks ago. It's almost like a hedge fund holding these stocks has blown up.

But it's not just the medical stocks, a lot of the hot tech stocks are also sucking wind while things look fine based on SPY or QQQ. That's also borne out by some of the other indicators on the General Market Overview page. Advancers-to-decliners was 19:31 today. The % of stocks above their 50-day moving averages is at 54% -- not what I consider healthy when the major indices are cruising along near all-time highs. As a friend of mine likes to say when discussing the market: be careful out there!

Just noting that certain medical stocks are going bonkers day after day in this current environment. This recent IPO was up 16% today to a new high and has now more than doubled from its IPO price. Also see NVTA, GH, INSP, TNDM, NSTG, etc. Definitely a sector to pay attention to these days.

Here's a chart I love when looking at the last year or so but when I zoom out multiple years it's a nightmare. It does appear that the company is turning the corner -- I haven't yet looked at their earnings. (Along with being in the life sciences space, this is reminding me of the charts of two of my recent big winners -- TNDM and NVTA.) So it's going on a watchlist and I'll be looking for a pullback setup I like.

I really like the pullback here. It's got *potential* nearby support from the 50-day moving average and its lower Bollinger Band. The wildcard here is that the IPO lockup just expired, so there are potentially a lot of shares ready to be sold. I like the company (well, their technology) and may buy some in my IRA where I'm more lenient about letting a position move against me.

Moves like this make me rethink my trading rules. I won't enter a position just before earnings. This had earnings today but late last week it had back-to-back days of my favorite combination of signals -- a Calm After Storm with a Non-ADX 1,2,3,4 Pullback. It's now up 50% in 3 sessions... without me.