Tuesday's sell-off may have been a classic case of buy the rumor/sell the news -- heightened a bit by the president's anticipatory remarks at his first press conference on Monday.
Whatever the reason for Tuesday's sell-off, it will no doubt terrorize the public and have the letter writers running for even deeper cover.
Investors Intelligence reported that bullish letter writers moved down to 32.3% and bears rose to 38.7% -- the highest percentage of bears since the Nov. 21 bottom. In addition, the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) bears have increased for the fifth week in a row.
Since both of these services are contra-indicators, they are bullish and support the view that, despite the bad news, the market will more than likely continue to hold at the support zones that have been in place for more than four months.
But there will be areas of continued weakness, and most of those are oriented to the consumer.
Our ChangeWave research shows a "grim spending outlook." While our January consumer survey contained intriguing signs of a leveling off in the rate of spending decline, the February results show a reversal and represent the worst spending outlook ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey
Thus, short-side traders can still benefit from weakness in consumer-oriented shorts. One of the best ways to do this is with my trade of the day, the UltraShort Consumer Goods ProShares (NYSE: SZK).
Sam Collins is a contributor to OptionsZone.com.
Before the bell: Futures higher ahead of housing, jobless data
Nuclear power is on the comeback trail
Apple backs AT&T in continuing spat with Verizon
