This market has something for everybody. Thursday was a bull vs. bear, classic market action day. We started off the day with news of Germany deflation, which in theory should make the Germans more agreeable to quantitative easing . There's one for the bulls. Then we had better initial jobless claims ... another one for the bulls. Then right out of the gates the market was under assault from bearish traders who smelled blood from the technical assault of the S & P 500 cash in the last few sessions. We broke below the 50-day moving average, then the 100-day moving average and at one point, the 200-day moving average (1973) was in clear sight, but we stopped decisively at the recent low of 1989 and bounced. The bounce coincided with the Goldman Sachs blurb that was making its way around the Street that mentioned rotation of over $13 billion-plus into equities for month end. With only one day left in the month and algos driving markets, the bears didn't stand a chance. Read More Is there any way to trade (gulp!) deflation? The bulls took back the 100-day moving average in the S & P 500 (2009) in quick order and proceeded to climb to close at 2021. It was a huge victory for the bulls, but plenty of room to be considered just another in a series of lower highs, a bearish pattern and meaning the day wasn't a total loss for those betting against the market. There were plenty of individual names to digest after the bell, one of which was Amazon . This is one of those telegraphed trades that we all should feel dumb about missing. Read More Is Amazon finally warming up to Wall Street? I have been a long-term fan of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I have always been of the mindset that growing revenues at the pace that Amazon does is ultimately most important. You can always cut spending to generate profits. Bezos got out there in front of the cameras recently and said he would continue to run his business as usual and would not be concerned with profits and would rather make growth investments for the future. My trader radar went up when I heard that and I realized this was going to be the quarter where Amazon showed signs of profitability and that's what we got and the stock reacted as you would expect, by ripping higher. Another name that reported was Google and at first it got hit aggressively, but recovered nicely in the aftermarket after the management team came on the earnings call. Google's most recent problem is that it had been trying to invest its way out of being called a one-trick pony. Read More Burger stock bull market beats market by double Value players say it's growing at 20 percent per year and trades at roughly 25 times earnings so why not stay in it. The billion-dollar question that I as a shareholder am asking myself is at what point am I in a value trap of good fundamentals wrapped in an ever declining stock price? Hopefully the post-earnings bounce holds and I don't get forced out of the name since I am positive on its many recent growth initiatives. Another story to keep an eye on is Yahoo/Alibaba. If the bloom is off the rose with Alibaba , then holding Yahoo as I am into the spinoff of the Alibaba stake is pointless. Keep an eye on Yahoo shares if it flirts with a break of $40. That's probably a good exit. There is always time to buy it back if it rallies into the fourth quarter as the spinoff chatter escalates. Enough single stock stories for now. Let's get back to the macro scorecard. Read More Trend trader: Playing a euro fall to parity Ukraine is still a mess. Europe is too confusing. Greece is, well Greece. China growth is only going lower. The U.S. dollar is most likely going higher and will continue to take many stocks lower, as we have seen. Oil is going lower, taking many jobs and collateral industries with it. When it is all said and done, my trader's instinct is to sell rallies until new highs in the S & P 500 are made. Steven Grasso is director of institutional sales at Stuart Frankel. Follow him on Twitter @grassosteve . D isclosure : Long Google and several other large, U.S. stocks
