Monday, August 24, 2009

Market Update

Today is a typical post-MAD (Major Accumulation Day) pattern: the market tried to go higher but couldn’t sustain because of profit-taking, while dip buyers were excited to buy any magnitude of selloff.  Due to the balance of bulls and bears, finally the market didn’t go anywhere.  A doji means future direction is undecided, while the previous direction will likely hold.  The intermediate term trend is still pointing up, however significant negative divergence has appeared on the daily chart on many indicators (refer to 0.0.3 SPX Intermediate-term Trading Signals) and the pattern starting from this March seems like a giant bearish rising wedge.  Technically the overbought condition has not been fully corrected at the market close, the market may pullback further tomorrow morning to reach the support zone at 1015-1018 (which is also 38.2% retracement) then the uptrend may resume.  On SPY 15-min chart, a mini falling wedge has formed with positive divergence on STO and ChiOsc.

image SPX hourly  image XLF hourly

In term of the market breadth, most signals are still very bullish.  The pullback didn’t even push TRIN above 1, CPC and CPCE are also extremely low.  Sometimes over-bullish put/call ratio is an early sign of deeper pullback, so it’s better to protect long positions carefully.

XLF gapped up and broke out the resistance.  However all gains were given back later.  We should watch carefully how it goes in the coming days.  Technically as long as the support at 13.7 still holds, the uptrend will be intact.

The crude oil is trying again to break the overhead resistance.  It seems there is no reason it cannot succeed, but the bounce off of US dollar (as well as falling gold) may not help this trend.

image Crude oil daily

In summary, in the very short term the market may (or may not) pull back further.  In longer time frames, the market is in clearly uptrend.  The basic strategy is still buy dip with protected unless the intermediate trend is confirmed to be reversed (not now).