Good morning! Thursday was a pretty decent day for daytrading, but a rough one for the longer term and particularly for the bulls. The morning began with a continuation of Wednesday's correction off the 100 day simple moving average support in the NASDAQ Composite. After only a few minutes, the bulls were making new highs on the week. This was a rather significant accomplishment given the strong selling that began shortly after the new year. It was not, however, enough to hold back the stronger bears.

The morning rally wound to a close by the time the 10:45 ET reversal period hit. At that point the NASDAQ really began to show a lot of weakness. That index had ran right into its 200 sma on the 15 minute charts and the pace of the selling picked up significantly once the 5 minute 20 sma broke going into 11:00 ET.  The S&P500 and Dow Jones Ind. Ave. held up a lot better over noon. While the NASDAQ was basing along the 15 minute 20 sma, both the S&P and Dow managed to make slightly higher highs on the day. The pace of the upside was exceptionally slow, despite attempts on the 1 minute charts to put in a showing for a strong upside move. The 5 minute 20 sma gave way in both once the 13:00 ET reversal period hit early in the afternoon.

13:00 ET is a typical time for strong afternoon trend moves to begin. The other strong afternoon reversal period is 14:00 ET. On Thursday the earlier one sufficed. After falling back into mid-day lows, the indices formed bear flag patterns with the 5 minute 20 sma as resistance. Volume declined into these resistance levels, indicating a lack of strength despite the correction. This led to continued selling out of the 14:00 ET reversal period and a move into the 5 minute 200 sma support in the NASDAQ.

The market continued to form 5 minute bear flag patterns into the close. The strength of the selling picked up into the last hour of the day, but volume was not really that high. Typically a stronger than average rise in volume will indicate exhaustion on a selloff. That was not the case on Thursday despite the extended downtrend intraday. While we don't have much for strong short setups forming into Friday given the extent of the late day selling, I will continue to treat buy setups primarily as daytrades until the pace on the selling intraday slow as compared to the rallies.

Economic Reports and Events
Feb. 10: Trade Balance for Dec (8:30 am), Treasury Budget for Jan (2:00 pm)
Feb 14: Retail Sales for Jan (8:30 am), Retail Sales ex-auto for Jan (8:30 am), Business Inventories for Dec (10:00 am)
Feb 15: NY Empire State Index for Feb (8:30 am), Net Foreign Purchases for Dec (9:00 am), Capacity Utilization for Jan (9:15 am), Industrial Production for Jan (9:15 am), Crude Inventories 02/10 (10:30 am)
Feb 16: Building Permits for Jan (8:30 am), Export Prices ex-ag. for Jan (8:30 am), Housing Starts for Jan (8:30 am), Import Prices ex-oil for Jan (8:30 am), Initial Claims 02/11 (8:30 am), Philadelphia Fed for Feb (12:00 pm)
Feb 17: Core PPI for Jan (8:30 am), PPI for Jan (8:30 am), Mich Sentiment-Prel. for Feb (9:50 am)

Earnings Announcements of Interest
Only stocks with an average daily volume of 500K+ are listed. List may not be complete so be sure to always check your stock's earnings date before holding a position overnight. (A) = Earnings after the close, (B) = Earnings before the open, (?) = Earnings time not specified at the time of this writing
Feb. 10: AU (?), ACI (B), CHB (B), CBB (B), CVH (?), ECL (B), IIJI (?), VC (B)
Feb 13: A (?), ANR (B), BRO (A), CD (4:00 pm ET), CMED (07:00 am ET), DDR (A), ENCY (?), GLG (B), HMY (01:00 am ET), IVIL (A), KIM (?), LNCR (A), LNC (A), STO (02:30 am ET), STP (A), ELOS (B), SVM (B), VAL (?), VECO (A)
Feb 14: ANF (A), LEND (B), EYE (B), AEE (B), ACAS (A), BHP (?), CEPH (A), DADE (A), DE (?), DE (?), DQE (B), FTI (A), HL (?), N (B), IM (A), JAH (?), LVS (A), MMC (B), MAS (?), OSI (A), PLAB (A), STR (A), Q (B), RNWK (?), SIAL (A), TRAD (?), RIG (B), UBS (01:00 am ET), UMC (08:00 am ET), WMI (B)
Note: All economic numbers and earnings reports are in lines with those compiled by Yahoo Finance. Occasionally changes will occur that are made after the posting of this column.

Toni Hansen is President and Co-founder of the Bastiat Group, Inc., and runs the popular Trading From Main Street. She can be reached at Toni@tradingfrommainstreet.com.