Lack of Progress on ‘Good News’ a Concern for Market – TheStreet

There wasn't enough red on the screens Wednesday to quality as a "sell the news" reaction, but the lack of progress on "good news" is a little worrisome.

Apple (AAPL) held onto its gains and managed to close up more than 2% at an all-time high, but there wasn't the wild chasing that would have likely occurred if the stock was less extended.

The Fed was about as dovish as could possibly be without actually cutting rates, but the market failed to gain any traction. Fed ChairJerome Powell, however, made it clear that the Fed will continue to expand its balance sheet into the second quarter of 2020.

The S&P 500 closed at the lows of the day on slightly negative breadth of 3,500 gainers to 3,900 advancers.

In the background is some continued concern about the coronavirus. Powell mentionedthe virus that is quickly spreading as a risk, but stated that it was too early to quantify its impact.

When the market has strong, positive news, but fails to make any real progress; that is a warning sign, but it is still early and we need to see the reaction to reports Wednesday night from Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook (FB) .

Microsoft beat on both the top and bottom lines and is trading up initially about 2%. This is very similar to what Apple did last night. The test will be holding onto those gains as the news is digested.

Facebook is ahead, but not to the extent of Microsoft or Apple, and the stock is trading down sharply with a loss of around 6%.

The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) is down following that news. We'll see how this develops, but the big risk here is that good news will not be enough to push this market even higher. The conditions were good for more upside today but market players used up plenty of energy for little progress.

Have a good evening. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Lack of Progress on 'Good News' a Concern for Market - TheStreet