March 19, 2024

Late rally masks tough session

Index & Sector performance 10/15/14 The Market: A very volatile session in today’s trading which saw the S&P 500 (SPY) down 3% before a sharp last hour rally helped the index only finish down 0.75%.  Without that late rally, the SPY would have been down year-to-date at the close.  As has been the case of late, the Russell 2000 (IWM) outperformed finishing the session up over 1%. The best performing sector in today’s session was Energy (XLE).  Like the SPY, the XLE was down much more earlier in the session but finished the session up 0.76% after a strong last…

FOMC minutes ease market concerns

Index & Sector performance 4/9/14 The Market: After bottoming and bouncing in yesterday’s session, the S&P 500 futures spend the majority of the overnight session consolidating in a tight range.  This lead to an early breakout, retest, and continuation higher but it was after the FOMC minutes were released at 2pm ET when the strongest gains were realized.  Concern the Fed would be aggressive with rate hikes subsided and traders rewarded the market with 1+% gains across the board with the Nasdaq leading the charge up 1.7%.  Next on the economic data schedule is Unemployment Claims which are released at…

3 strong days higher

Index & Sector performance 4/1/14 The Market: Today’s early action targeted our highlighted region from last night’s update of $1875ES and then pulled back to support near $1870ES.  Later in the day the market made another rally toward and pressed through $1875ES and now resides above in the after hours session.  While we are starting to see some intraday negative divergences develop on the market which provide some caution to the recent strong 3 day rally, we fully expect the S&P 500 emini to challenge the highlighted resistance region of $1884-90ES in overnight or early morning trading.  From there we…

FOMC statement & new Chair tomorrow

Index & Sector performance 3/18/14 The Market: We would not be shocked to see the market meander overnight and into tomorrow until the FOMC statement and Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s first press conference.  While we do not expect there to be a great difference in message or tone from the Fed, do not be surprised if the market uses this opportunity to send a message to Yellen if there is something that is not liked. In the meantime, traders should watch  today’s high of 1867ES as a break could be signaling a move to 1880ES and the index should see…

Next target the 50 day SMA?

Index & Sector performance 3/13/14 The Market: A strong down day in the market but coming into the day people may have thought that would be a result of a poor Unemployment Claims number but we actually saw a better than expected 315K (334K est).  After the report the index meandered higher into the open and then after peaking out above trend line resistance, turned and started what proved to be a day long decline. At 11:30 am we posted on StockTwits that the decline in the ES looked like it had lower to go especially due to the slope…

Choppy session ahead of Jobs

Index & Sector performance 3/6/14 The Market: Overall today was a choppy session which started with an overnight breakout which couldn’t gain steam and retraced back to the breakout levels in early morning trading.  The market then found a bottom and rallied to the 1880ES pivot which acted as resistance twice finally sending the index back down toward the original breakout region in late day trading. We expect the choppy trading to continue until the Non-Farm payroll number tomorrow at 8:30am EST.  We have consensus estimates currently at 151K with an Unemployment number of 6.6%.  Below is a recap of…

Market starts on Tryptophan

Index & Sector performance 12/2/13 The Market: Overall not a very active day in this first full trading session after the Thanksgiving holiday and to start December.      Today’s action started with an early dip that was quickly bought and started to rally higher until 12:30 pm EST.  That is where the rally lost steam and started a descent back down toward the earlier lows.  The market reached and went through those lows finally closing at $1800 in the S&P 500.  It is unclear if this slow start to the month is about to start a slide or if it is…