Pre-market update (updated 9am eastern):

• European markets are trading -1.1% lower.
• Asian markets traded 0.6% higher.
• US futures are slightly higher ahead of the bell. 

Economic reports due out (all times are eastern): Jobless Claims (8:30am), Philadelphia Fed Survey (10am), Leading Indicators (10am), EIA Natural Gas (10:30am)

Technical Outlook (SPX):

• Bears erased all of the bulls gains from yesterday, leading me to believe that if we push 4 points lower and below 1549, we can determine Tuesday’s rally to be a dead cat bounce. 
• Below this level, you have a break below the long-term upward trending channel off of the November lows. But price needs to close below this level. 
• We essentially challenged the 50-day moving average yesterday at the days lows and we bounced higher. 
• I would not get excited about today’s gap higher, unless we can compound those gains within the first hour of trading. 
• Yesterday we did not see the bulls try to buy the dip after the first 1.5 hours of trading, like we typically do during large sell-offs. Which concerns me about whether the dip buying has exhausted itself. 
• Volume continues to remain elevated during down days. 
• VIX back up into the 16’s. 
• Things get very nasty if we drop below 1538 on SPX. 
• Markets don’t care about the economy. That is not what is driving them. The markets only care about what the Fed is doing to keep equities propped up. 
• Both channels (July October 2012) and the price channel we are currently in are very similar in nature. 
• We haven’t seen a market pullback in excess of 4% since October/November time-frame. 

My Opinions & Trades:

• No new trades yesterday. 
• Remain Long BWLD at $87.95, WTW at $41.75, DISCK at $71.12, TRLA at $33.07, TSCO at $105.55.
• Join me each day for all my real-time trades and alerts in the SharePlanner Splash Zone

Chart for SPX: