Jobs, Cars, and Earnings

Pre-market futures are up on two specific things: FDX beat soured earnings expectations and is trading up a bit before the open, and Weekly Jobless Claims came out slightly better than the catastrophic expectations.

The market is catching a tailwind off the news. It should be enough to gap SPY right back on the path to yesterday's high around 92.50. The gap should take SPY to 91.60 or so, and then I speculate the market will make a run to yesterday's high early in the day. From there, if the Bulls can't push through, then we could stay tight again for another day. You can refer to the chart and Watchlist I posted last night for SPY and some stocks. Also refer to the day before's Watchlist. Resistance on SPY is 92.50 and support is 90.00. Those are your pivot points on the short term (support and resistance, not the technical indicator). So a move above 92.50 clears the way for a move to 95.00, and a move below the 90.00 area clears the way for a drop back down to 87.50.

Here is a chart of the SPX index itself:
(click on image to enlarge)

The price points are similar, just translated up. In order to stay bullish short term, I really don't want the SPX dropping below 895, and a drop below 892 is enough to keep me clear of calls until the next signal. If the market pushes above yesterday's high, then a move to the 950 area is possible over the next couple of days.

As always, we shall see.....

11:55 am MT: Intra-day Update: The market is at a critical tipping point intra-day. If the SPX drops much lower than this 898 area then it's at risk for confirming a flat Head and Shoulders on the 30m charts.

If the Bulls can push the SPX back above 905 in the next few minutes, then the consolidation flattens out enough to stop the reversal. It looks like the trading day will be a consolidation day at best and a bit of a selling day at worst. The Bulls are very disinterested to this point, so the drift on the day is downward.

The market is starting to form an ugly trading pattern on the Daily charts (or beyond the ugliness of the Fall, or more choppy than violent, or whatever can be said about the past 3 months.....). Anyway, we are getting very quick bullish moves followed by long consolidations of a week or so. In other words, we get 1-2 days of action followed by a week of being forced to go back to the 5m and 15m charts. It's a bit nasty, but it is what it is in our fickle market. The key is identifying the pattern, and the pattern right now is "no follow-through", which means you trade the 30m to Daily swing for 1-2 days and then switch right back to the 10m - 15m swing for the following several days to week. It's a bit nuts, but you can still make a nice cheese ball with nuts, so nuts it is.....