Bullish Divergence? S&P 500 Recap

Intra-day: Things began calmly enough with a very small opening gap lower. But the S&P quickly rebounded to put the high of the day on the chart just after 10:00 am. The next forty-five minutes were sharply lower as the index threw off twelve points. But bulls were not giving up easily. The next forty-five minutes the index bounced eight points before sellers resumed their work to quickly take the index back to test the lows before yet another ten point bounce. Sellers took the index down about six points early in the afternoon before trading sideways until about 2:30 pm. The final ninety minutes saw the S&P trade upward a few points to close in the middle of the intraday range while the Russell 2000 small caps traded sideways with a slight downward bias. When those indices move in opposite directions, the small caps often lead.

Breadth: While breadth was negative today, declining volume was lighter in declining issues and stronger in advancing issues; this can be seen as a positive for the market. Bears should be alarmed that the five day low on the S&P also managed the lowest number of New Lows; this is a bullish divergence.
Volume: was lighter than Wednesday. Looking at the intraday volume pattern, we see a huge spike in volume with the midmorning sell off and then we see volume dropping with the market bounce early afternoon. This pattern isn't bullish at all. Looking at the Breadth Indicators we continue to see a mix but today is looking more bearish but nothing conclusive as of yet.


A/D: For the S&P Index there were 153 components advancing and 322 components declining. On the NYSE 3,135 issues were traded with 1,137 advancing issues and 1,901 retreating issues, a ratio of 1.67 to one declining. There were 160 new highs and 5 new lows. 


New Highs: The five day moving average of New Highs is 279 while the five day moving average of New Lows is 11 and the ten day moving average of Net Advancing is 483. The Net Advancing data indicates a bullish trend.44% of the S&P are above their five day moving average, 62.6% are above their 10 day average, 82.2% are above their 20 day moving average, 72% are above their 50 day moving average, and 87.6% are above their 200 day moving average.


Sector Performance:


Sectors stronger than the S&P for Thursday:
- Energy -- Outperformed  by +15%.
- Technology -- Outperformed by +12%.
- Consumer Staples -- Outperformed by +29%.

Sectors weaker than the S&P for Thursday:
- Basic Materials -- Underperformed  by -11%.
- Financials -- Underperformed  by -32%.
- Industrials -- Underperformed  by -34%.
- Utilities -- Underperformed  by -24%.
- Health Care -- Underperformed  by -2%.
- Consumer Discretionary -- Underperformed  by -25%.


Support/Resistance
S: 1325
R:1340


OUTLOOK:
Short-term: Bull within a bear market. For how long? Just watch the 150dma. 
Secular trend: Secular Bear that started in 2000 continues.