A big move in crude oil and the dollar getting hit hard helped propel stocks well off their session lows during Wednesday’s session. Crude jumped nearly 9% on the day after falling 6% in back to back days. GOOGL and AMZN did not fare as well as the Dow Industrials as both stocks were lower on the session. Volume jumped across the board giving the Dow and S&P 500 accumulation days. The NASDAQ 100 fell 50bps on big volume. Perhaps after last year’s run-up we are seeing rotation out of large cap technology. Financials had a dramatic turnaround, most likely due to the rise in crude. Financials would certainly feel the brunt of defaults if crude oil continues to stay well below $40 a barrel. Not a bad session for stocks even the Russell 2000 was able to sneak into positive territory. This market needs to build upon this action if it has any chance of sustaining this current market rally.

Let’s not kid ourselves the dramatic rise in crude oil had a lot to do with today’s move. While it would be hard for us to pinpoint the percentage energy names were up nearly 4% and materials were up over 3.3% on the day. Consumer staples and discretionary both ended in the red while information technology was the worst performing S&P 500 sector. At the end of the session we had increased volume with the S&P 500 and Dow higher. It is accumulation and even the NASDAQ composite was able to hang onto its key level at 4500. There are positives, but more needs to be done to give us conviction with this market moving higher.

One big drawback is certainly the Dow leading the entire market higher today. The Dow was up over 1% today while the S&P 500 gained just 50bps. XOM, DD, CAT, CVX were up over 4%. These names have been in clear downtrends for quite some time. There does seem to be some accumulation in these names, but I would not count your chickens just yet.

The jobs report Friday will be fun. First, we need this market to tighten up and produce viable long signals. Stay tuned.