Pre-market update:

  • Asian markets traded 0.3% higher. 
  • European markets are trading 0.2% lower.
  • US futures are trading 0.3% lower ahead of the market open. 


Economic reports due out (all times are eastern): 
MBA Purchase Applications (7), ICSC-Goldman Store Sales (7:45), Housing Starts (8:30), PPI-FD (8:30), Redbook (8:55), FOMC Minutes (2)

Technical Outlook (SPX):

  • SPX rose for the seventh time in the last eight sessions yesterday. 
  • Without a doubt the market is exhausted. Yesterday marked the 11th straight day of gains for the S&P futures – that’s unheard of. 
  • Even if the SPX can make new all-time highs here, there won’t be any buying power to support it as it will have been all used up on the rally that got us to that point. 
  • Stronger volume yesterday than what we saw the previous three days. 
  • A divergence in the VIX with it popping to 13.87 yesterday. 
  • Ideally for the bears a big move that would push the market below 1809 would re-ignite market fears of a new sell-off. Maybe a break of 1825 would be enough. 
  • I suspect that there will be some resistance between 1841 and 1850 this week. 
  • The problem with the breakout here to new all-time highs is that SPX would have rallied 7% without any pullback and would be making brand new highs after it is extremely over-extended which is likely to lead to a pullback of some type. 
  • Stochastics are overbought yet again. 
  • The biggest technical support level is the strength SPX found from the trend line that started off of the August ’13 lows. 
  • Markets don’t care about the economy nor earnings. That is not what is driving them. The markets only care about what the Fed is doing to keep equities propped up. 

My Opinions & Trades:

Chart for SPX:

SP 500 Market Analysis 2-19-14

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