Good morning! After three straight days of selling, the market found some support on Wednesday. By the end of the day the Nasdaq Composite was the only one of the three major indices that finished lower, at 2,268.25. The S&P 500 gained 2.59 points to close at 1,278.47, while the Dow Jones Ind. Ave. rose 25.05 points to close at 11,005.74. Overall, however, advancers versus decliners were fairly evenly matched on both the NYSE and NASDAQ.

The morning began with a decent downside gap. Due to the more extended downtrend intraday, the gap had a lot higher odds of closing. It managed to do this within the first 45 minutes of the day, but once the market hit the prior afternoon highs it had a more difficult time holding onto the gains. The selling was not dramatic to begin with, but it picked up steam heading into lunch, stalling just before the 12:00 ET reversal period on an exhaustion move with strong volume.

The mid-day action was a more difficult read that usual. The choppy action of the prior day was still at play at that point. Things started to calm down and move more steadily for the latter half of the day. The mid-day lows held well and the market saw a steady upside move to take it back into the resistance from the morning highs. With fairly even pace on downside versus upside action, it was easy for those highs to hold and the market pulled back into the 14:00 ET reversal period. I was looking for a bit longer of a correction given the upside, but instead of falling into a triangle on the 5 minute charts, the indices broke through the prior highs, moving steadily until hitting equal move resistance going into the 15:00 ET reversal period. This also corresponded with the 15 minute 200 sma in the S&P 500 and Tuesday's highs in the Nasdaq.

The market so far has been correcting fairly steadily on the daily charts off the highs of the last couple of weeks. Intraday there has been a lot more overlap, however, and has yet to really show strong downside exhaustion despite Wednesday afternoon's bounce. Typically what you would see for exhaustion on a pullback is either a decline in the volume into a strong support level, such as the 20, 40, or 50 day simple moving average, or a sharp increase and spike in volume on the daily chart. We have yet to see either occur, so while we can get a decent intraday correction off lows, I will still be using intraday charts for greater guidance. Currently the Dow is the strongest of the three indices and will likely continue to be the upside leader.

Economic Reports and Events
Mar 09: Initial Claims 03/04 (8:30 am), Trade Balance for Jan (8:30 am)
Mar 10: Average Workweek for Feb (8:30 am), Hourly Earning for Feb (8:30 am), Nonfarm Payrolls for Feb (8:30 am), Unemployment Rate for Feb (8:30 am), Wholesale Inventories for Jan (10:00 am), Treasury Budget for Feb (14:00 pm)
Mar 13: -
Mar 14: Current Account for Q4 (8:30 am), Retail Sales for Feb (8:30 am), Retail Sales ex-auto for Feb (8:30 am), Business Inventories for Jan (10:00 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
Mar 09: ARO (A), BBI (B), CTIC (B), CLE (06:00 am ET), FLE (B), GOL (A), GTI (B), HANS (?), TMR (?), NSM (?), ZQK (?), TNE (B), PLCE (?), URBN (06:00 am ET)
Mar 10: ALTI (?), ANN (B)
Mar 13: DNDN (?), IDWK (?), PVX (?), SONS (A)
Mar 14: GS (B), MIR (?), PDE (A), SUG (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.