S&P 500 Recap and A Look Inside the Markets

Good morning. S&P futures are up slightly this morning. Yesterday Asia and Europe were both mixed with all near break-even. Traders around the globe were being cautious as geopolitical fears weighed on sentiment. Japan and Libya particularly were the focus. S

The opening session of the week began without a significant gap and proceeded to move upward five points. But as the SPX approached resistance at 1320 the index sharply retreated. A bottom was found in the 1314 area and the index bounced but a lower high was painted followed by a second test of the 1314 area. The ensuing bounce created another lower high and then the 1314 level was tested a third time. Yet another lower high and a fourth test of 1314 during the final half hour of the session and this time support failed to hold. The intraday trading range expanded several points as the index broke through support and closed at the low of the day.

For the SPX Index there were 151 components advancing and 324 components declining. On the NYSE 3,159 issues were traded with 1,253 advancing issues and 1,802 retreating issues, a ratio of 1.44 to one declining. There were 114 new highs and 16 new lows. The five day moving average of New Highs is 130 while the five day moving average of New Lows is 13 and the ten day moving average of Net Advancing is 246. The Net Advancing data indicates a bullish trend.

Declining volume was higher at a ratio of 1.66 to one. The closing TRIN was 1.05 and the final tick was -522. The five day average of TRIN is 1.1 and the ten day average of TRIN is 1.4. The NYSE Composite Index lost -0.3% today while the SPX lost -0.28%.

For the NYSE, relative to the previous 30 session average, volume was -26.01% below the average. Of the last 15 sessions 4 sessions ended with volume greater than the previous rolling 30 day average volume. Of the last 30 sessions, 19 sessions ended on a positive tick, 6 of last 10. For the SPX, the day's volume was 73% of the average daily volume for the last year. Volume was 70.5% of the last 10 day average and 88.8% of the previous day’s volume.

Overall a ho-hum weak volume day. So where are we going to go from here and the is the million dollar question. To me this looks like a head-fake, that is suckering in the retail investor and the smart money is selling the strength. 

I'm not going to short until we break the 50dma.