Pre-market update (updated 8:00am eastern):

• Europe is trading 0.2% lower.
• Asian markets traded 0.5% higher.
• US futures are slightly higher.

Economic reports due out (all times are eastern): Jobless Claims (8:30am), Producer Price Index (8:30am), Retail Sales (8:30am), Business Inventories (10am), EIA Natural Gas Report (10:30am),   

Technical Outlook (SPX):

• Yesterday the SPX had what looked like a solid day of gains in the books only to give up over 90% of those gains before the end of the day. 
• The candle stick pattern formed yesterday on the SPY would typically be considered bearish, but I don’t think it will weigh much on market direction going forward. I’ve seen patterns like this like on 6/7 and 6/11 and the market primarily ignores the bearish candles. 
• I mentioned the need for a pullback yesterday, and yesterday’s pullback may have been exactly that, it just occurred on an intraday basis. But the move was in excess of 10 points which is significant. 
• So  yesterday’s intraday pullback may have been all the bulls needed for a pullback in this market. 
• It has been six days since we finished a day in the red. That’s hard to do and ultimately sustain. Last time we saw this back in August, we traded slightly lower for the next 3 days in a consolidating manner. 
• Volume remains steady. 
• Just a hair-away from being short-term overbought. 
• 8-day exponential moving average has provided a lot of rising support for this trending market. A break and close below it, would be a cause for concern. 
• There’s a negative divergence on the RSI and other similar indicators where it failed to make a higher high against the previous highs of this month. 
• We are seeing similar price action to what what occurred off of the June lows. Assuming as much, it would lead me to believe we’ll see a mild pullback in the next 3 days. 
• There’s an inverse head and shoulders pattern forming on SPX daily chart that is confirmed at 1422. 
• Price action showing a downtrend off of the October highs was broken Monday on SPX. 
• Current uptrend off of the November lows is steep, but not atypical for new rallies. Overtime the up-ward trend-line will flatten out some. 
• 8-day EMA continues to provide rising support for the markets in the short-term. 
• Ideally for the bulls, if price action can close at or above 1429, the downtrend off of the September highs would be officially done and over with, as a new higher high would be established for the first time. 
• Fiscal Cliff discussions continues to dominate the news. 
• SPX currently has recaptured the 10, 20, 50, and 200-day moving averages. 
• VIX closed below 16.

My Opinions & Trades:

• Bought BSBR at $7.03
• Remain long SIG at $54.01, EW at $91.01, AL at $22.70, LULU at $73.01.
• I’ll be looking to add 1-2 new positions to the portfolio today. 
• Here is my real-time swing-trading portfolio and past-performance

Chart for SPX: