Major averages were down fractionally yesterday on higher volume breaking eight day winning streaks for all of the major indexes. A number of stocks got hit hard though after having big gains over the last several day to several weeks, so in many cases these were not particularly unexpected. Kansas City Fed President Esther George urged slowing the Federal Reserve's bond-buying program "sometime in the first half of next year," reports said. If that were to happen, that would still leave a minimum of 6 months of quantitative easing at its current torrid pace. The uptrend thus seems intact.
In economic news, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index rose to the highest level since January 2006. Strength in the economy is good on the one hand, but bad on the other in that the Fed may slow QE sooner than expected.
Tesla Motors (TSLA) sold off on high volume after Goldman Sachs set a new price target on TSLA to 84, up from 61, but a far cry away from where it was trading well above 100. Goldman's best case for TSLA sees it getting 3.5% global market share with sales of 200,000 vehicles which would put shares at $113. That said, fair valuations often go out the window when it comes to hot stocks with huge momentum, so should TSLA continue to exceed expectations, it could still end up spending some time forming a new base and then break out again as has occurred with so many leading stocks in the past. For now, however, the upside momentum in the stock has been capped as an earnings surprise is likely already baked into the cake.