More of the same today as late selling pressure shows the mindset of the market—in and out on the same day. Not too surprising given that we have the Producer Price Index (PPI) coming out tomorrow morning. Also, the news today was just not favorable for the mild gains that were in the market before the last half hour. The biggest downer of the day has to be Citi’s ($C) plans to axe an additional 50,000 + jobs and fear that other companies will follow their lead. I can’t help but wonder how many of those jobs were actually “needed” in the first place. I remember when investors used to buy Citigroup simply for its dividend.

The Federal Reserve came out and said that industrial output actually rose 1.3% last month. Of course that is a meager “rise” after September saw a whopping 3.7% drop—the largest in 60 years. Perhaps there was a bit of bullish sentiment in that report, but when you think about the probability that consumer demand is not only falling here in the US but worldwide, you get a wake-up call. Bottom line is that we had an increase for October, but it is highly likely that November will show another decline.

You can see that from the chart below we had a pretty bearish looking candle with that large topping tail today. It is also apparent that the 13 EMA (used by day traders and momentum traders) is acting as resistance again. The broader index was able to get above the 13 EMA towards the end of October but couldn’t get above the 30 EMA. Now that 30 EMA is about $2.30 above the 13 EMA. If, and that’s a big if, we get some good news from the PPI tomorrow and we can get a decent rally above that 30 EMA we could see a large short squeeze.

Tomorrow we get the producer price index (PPI), TIC long-term purchases, NAHB housing market index and some Fed speak from Big Ben and Sec. Paulson. On the earnings front, HD and MDT are reporting.