In September we managed an over bought, over loved and over obsessed upon stock market into October's decline.  That decline was simply a sentiment thing.  Sentiment needed to be re-set from way over bullish as we had been noting through fading stock participation, briskly over bullish ‘dumb' money and divergent ‘smart' money, among other indicators.

Enter the Microchip Semi News of the day, which conveniently tanked one of our leading momentum sectors and provided a buying opportunity as the SOX mini-crashed to the major support level NFTRH had been noting.  Then?  Firmly in the category of ‘you can't make this stuff up', Microchip Semi in essence said ‘sorry, just kidding': Global Semiconductor Outlook Brightens:

Chief Executive Steve Sanghi said the company has seen an improvement in bookings and billings since October.  “We are now even more confident that the small correction that we experienced in the September quarter is behind us,” he said.

During the acute phase of the Semi tankage, I called a contact of mine in the industry in order to decide whether or not to pull out the b/s detector on this whole mess. The result was this on-the-spot NFTRH update for subscribers, in real time…

“The bottom line of this update is that there appears to be nothing wrong with the Semiconductor sector based on boots on the ground information from the early cycle area of the equipment sector (which led the whole bull phase in Jan. 2013) and yet a chip maker is warning on the industry, not just its own business.

As for technicals, note this morning's public post SOX on Key Support Test.”

The point of this post is to illustrate how we should remain vigilant against hype, because hype hurts and many people herd to it.  Call the above promotional if you'd like, but it is what happened at a dynamic juncture.  We called b/s on the negative Semi hype, and even worked up a new upside target for Intel to boot.  For much of 2014 and now into 2015 hype has been readable and the market's interim swings definable between sharp declines and ‘V' bounces.