Today’s Trading Plan: Keeping the Market Upright

Technical Outlook:

• After a strong sell-off initially, the dip buyers came back strong and rallied the market back into positive territory.
• Volume was actually surprisingly stronger than I would have expected yesterday for a Thanksgiving holiday trading. It was higher than Monday and just a shade below average readings. 
• SPX is at a crossroads here between making new rally highs and whether it wants to sell-off here and establish new lower-lows by breaking below 2019. 
• A massive inverse head and shoulders pattern is forming on SPX that is worth following. A move above 2116 area would confirm the pattern. 
• SPX 30 minute chart is showing a lot of choppiness over the past few days of trading and no clear pattern exists. 
• Despite being up over 10% yesterday, VIX was crushed throughout the day and finished only 2% higher. 
• Terrorist plots and events continues to cause the algos to sell the market on any mention, so that remains a significant, and completely unpredictable market risk that looms large. 
• Breaking the declining resistance off of the May highs of this year, is of high importance here to the sustainability of this market. 
• Establishing a convincing higher-high on the current rally is of high importance here, otherwise bulls risk getting trapped in consolidation for the foreseeable future. 
• This is the Thanksgiving holiday week, which is traditionally a very bullish week for trading. The markets will be closed on Thursday and only open until 1pm on Friday. 
• For twelve years straight, the market over the course of the last 30 trading days has yielded a net positive gain, and reinforcing the concept of the “Santa Rally”.
• A rate hike is expected out of December’s Fed meeting. However, I still would not be surprised if the Fed backed out of raising rates yet again. They’ve been doing just that for years now. 

My Trades:

• Sold UPRO yesterday (day-trade) at $67.37 for a 1.9% gain. 
• Did not add any additional trades to the portfolio yesterday.  
• Will consider adding one to two new long position to the portfolio today, while also managing the profits on existing positions. 
• 70% Long / 30% Cash
• Remain long: MSFT at $53.88, FB at $104.85, TSO at $113.98, BIDU at $199.21, INFN  at $21.65,  and one additional trade.
• Join me each day for all my real-time trades and alerts in the SharePlanner Splash Zone

Chart for SPX: