The Market Kicks off the Holiday Season with a BIG BANG!

Markets were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, and Friday trading closed early at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Expectations for this holiday season had been lowered following drops in consumer confidence surveys.

"Take the consumer confidence readings, they're just numbers from surveys," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services. "But now we're finding out what consumer spending is really like, so the weekend numbers will be very important for the market."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU 12,980.88, +181.84, +1.4%) rallied 181 points to finish at 12,980. The S&P 500 index ($SPX 1,440.70, +23.93, +1.7%) gained 23 points to 1,440, while the Nasdaq Composite ($COMP 2,596.60, +34.45, +1.3%) rose 34 points to 2,596.

Remember, this is a short session and a lot of traders are shopping for their holidays. Nevertheless, let's celebrate the impressive market move by watching a Youtube Chinese music piece - Huo Yuan Jia (adapted from a Chinese Kung Fu movie):

Enjoy,

Market Swimmer

P.S. Forget about trading for a moment, I just watched a movie - "The Family Man" - starred by Nicolas Cage (released in the year of 2000) on NBC. It's an old one, but pretty good. A hedge fund manager "Jack" turned into a tire salesman, married with "Kate", having two kids. A personal note, little Swimmer just got an offer from a big hedge fund in NYC, I am a little worried about it. Anyway, please check it out if you have not seen it:

I missed the beginning, see more on my "YouTube" page:
Market Swimmer YouTube.

COT Report

According to the government sources, the commercials changed their net future positions of various indexes as the following:

Index	Trader Group	11/9/2007	11/16/2007	Difference
Dow	Commercials	-1093	-69	1024
Nasdaq	Commercials	6050	10273	4223
S&P 500	Commercials	46398	45139	-1259
Russ	Commercials	4754	4776	22
VIX	Commercials	119	4177	4058

They increased their long positions in NASD slightly, but they were big buyers of VIX index, expecting volatility to increase.

Last week's volatile action is giving a marginally better look to the index charts as we head toward the Thanksgiving holiday but there are still no bottoming signals in place.

Market Swimmer