Pre-market update (updated 8am eastern):

• European markets are trading 1.7% higher.
• Asian markets traded 1.1% higher. 
• US futures are trading moderately higher ahead of the opening bell. 

Economic reports due out (all times are eastern): Chicago Fed National Activity Index (8:30am), Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey (10:30am)

Technical Outlook (SPX):

• Friday was the start of what should only be considered a dead-cat bounce at this point. 
• Typical dead-cat bounces usually last about 2-3 days. Use them to close long positions, not add to them. 
• Watch the strength of today’s potential rally. If we start giving up the day’s gains early on, it is likely indicative that the rally is running out of steam and the shorts are reloading. 
• We are close to hitting short-term oversold, which is where we bounced at previously immediately after touching. However, that is overshadowed by the fact that we are overbought on nearly every other time frame. 
• The volume associated with Friday’s rally was much less than what we saw out of the market on Wednesday and Thursday’s sell-offs. 
• 30-minute chart and daily chart shows significant resistance for the market between 1521 and 1523. .
• A push above 1531, would effectively kill the dead-cat theory and result in a resumption of the bull market that we’ve seen since the November lows. 
• The bears have no hope of dropping this market significantly lower, until 1495 can be broken and closed below on the SPX. 
• VIX settled back into the 14’s. 
• Another sell-off today that takes  us below support at 1495 (16 points away) would likely lead us to testing the lower, rising channel (see below) in the 1480’s. 
• We haven’t seen a market pullback in excess of 4% since October/November time-frame. 
• The channel that we are currently trading in looks very similar to the channel that we traded in last year from June through September. 

My Opinions & Trades:

• No new trades on Friday. 
• If dead-cat bounce struggles after the open, will look to book some long positions. 
• Remain Long HCBK at $8.73, ADBE at $38.88 and MTB at $105.73; Short ILMN at $48.40.
• Here is my real-time swing-trading portfolio and past-performance

Chart for SPX: