Good morning! The market saw a strong open on Thursday, moving past the resistance from Wednesday afternoon highs that had been a concern. With the break of that resistance level, the prices that had broken then became support. The market did have a bit of difficulty right away holding onto those gain and pulled back for the first hour. The Dow Jones Ind. Ave. had the most relative weakness after it had led the bulls earlier in the week. In comparison to the NASDAQ, which was just coming off its 100 day sma support, the Dow was a lot more extended and it was easier for it to be held in on Thursday while the other two indices saw stronger upside into the later half of the morning.

Over noon the market climbed gradually to new highs on the week. The pace was close to average, however, and gave it a lot of room to correct into the early afternoon.  The volume in the market declined as the slower uptrend wound to a close just before 13:00 ET. That reversal period helped the channel break down. Volume remained light initially, but began to pick up slowly as the selling progressed.

The early afternoon decline only stalled when the NASDAQ formed an exhaustion move into 14:00 ET. A volume spike on that time frame, corresponding to the reversal zone and the support from early in the day, helped the market turn over for a final time into the afternoon. The 5 minute down trend came to a close when the NASDAQ managed to put in a slightly lower low around 14:30 ET with a 2B reversal pattern. The channel break led to an upside move that lasted into the close.

The intraday bias in the market heading into Friday remains strong. We are heading into a three day weekend, so the odds are higher that the best trading is going to take place in the morning. At present, that bias appears to favor the bulls. A nice uptrend channel intraday since 14:00 the day before will make it easier to see a larger correction on the 15 minute charts with the first hour of the day on Friday, however, and the slower pace on the upside will also add a bit of difficulty since a pivot off this pace would be likely to create a longer trading range on the 60 minute charts.

On that note, I'm going to be gone on Tuesday since I'll be in New York over the weekend for the trading expo. The market is closed on Monday, but I'll I won't be back in time for the new trading week, so I'll be picking up this column the next day. For anyone attending... I hope to see you there!

Economic Reports and Events 
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 17: APPX (?), CPB (?), PBR (A), PCG (?), RSH (?), SIRI (B)
Feb 20: CBJ (?), SBAC (B)
Feb 21: AEL (A), AAUK (?), ARW (B), BBD (?), ABX (A), CSE (?), CENX (A), CQB (A), DCEL (A), DLTR (B), ESRX (A), FBR (A), GRMN (B), GSF (A), TV (A), HET (?), JLG (a), MSO (B), NVTL (?), OMX (?), QLTI (B), KWK (A), RRC (A), CRM (A), SRE (B), SINA (A), S (B), SBL (?), TASR (?), TJX (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.