September 25, 2009 (FinancialWire) — Dr. Joe Duarte (http://www.joe-duarte.com) recently noted: The Powershares Nasdaq 100 Trust (NASDAQ: QQQQ) shook off the selling on Wednesday, but on Thursday it sagged. And the bad earnings report from Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) could make things even tougher on Friday.

Duarte added: It’s the end of the week, and a bad earnings report from a leading player like RIMM is likely to make the market skittish on Friday. That could have a nasty effect on QQQQ and the rest of the market as well.

The Nasdaq has been outperforming the NYSE for some time. This is a result of improving performance in technology stocks and the small stock universe. But if the tech sector starts to sell off aggressively, the spillover effect could affect the rest of the market, especially financial and economically sensitive stocks.

That’s why it’s important to watch the QQQQ ETF over the next few days. The QQQQ is the easy way to invest in the largest 100 stocks on the Nasdaq, including tech stocks. It’s also a good market bellwether since it attracts a lot of money.

So far, the QQQQ has held up, even on Thursday. It’s near its recent highs and lost very little on Wednesday, in contrast to the Dow Jones Industrial average, which lost 80 points by the close of business and on Thursday where the Nasdaq Composite took a fairly good size tumble.

If the QQQQ starts to roll over, this market may be a lot weaker than anything else seems to be telling us at this point. One sign of possible trouble ahead was the surge in volume as the QQQQ moved slightly lower at the end of the day on Wednesday and to a lesser degree on Thursday.

Duarte’s conclusion: Selling on higher volume is a bad thing for any stock. But if it starts happening to market leaders, it’s worse. A big hit to the Nasdaq and the QQQQ ETF is likely to signal that at least a short term decline lies dead ahead.

You can read about trading ETFs in more details in Market Timing For Dummies.

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Duarte partners with the Investors Resource Center at Investrend Information (http://www.investrendinformation.com).

Duarte’s IntelligentForecasts.com (http://www.intelligentforecasts.com) provides free news coverage and analysis, and his daily articles and news summaries offer recommendations and analysis for ETFs, and individual stocks in the technology, health and biotechnology, and energy sectors. Duarte has combined expertise in health care, energy, and the effects of politics and global intelligence on the financial markets offer a unique blend of insight and information to thousands of active investors and political and intelligence aficionados around the world on a daily basis.

He is the author of: Futures And Options For Dummies, Successful Energy Sector Investing, Successful Biotech Investing and co-author of After-Hours Trading Made Easy. In early 2001, in Successful Energy Sector Investing, he correctly predicted that Venezuela’s political problems could lead to an energy crisis in the United States. He has also appeared as a weekly guest on Market Mavens Radio and has logged appearances on KNX radio in Los Angeles, Financial Sense.com radio, and Wall Street Radio.

One of CNBC’s original Market Mavens, Dr. Duarte has been writing about the financial markets since 1990. His articles and commentary have been featured on CBS Marketwatch, Barron’s, Smart Money, Medical Economics, and in Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazines. In 2003, Doctor Duarte received second place, in the professional section, of the Medical Economics Investment Challenge with a 12-month return of 42%.

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