Good day! The market had a pretty rough time in Tuesday's trading session. The higher risk market we've been looking at over the last two weeks continued with one of the narrowest and choppiest range days we've seen so far this year. The day began with a very slight upside gap, continuing with a 5 minute breakout in the NASDAQ as it quickly broke the base at highs that had taken place going into Monday afternoon. This move was very brief, however, turning over into about 10:00 ET, forming a double top and then breaking lower into noon. The breakdown continued with a small Avalanche in the SP500 that took that index back to Monday's highs and the NASDAQ into Monday's close.

While fairly narrow, you can still get a decent afternoon move following action like we had seen so far on the day, but the larger time frames had a stronger tug of war going on. With the market having rallied so strongly the prior afternoon, it would be difficult for it to fall all the way back without first rounding off at highs on the larger 15 minute charts, something it failed to do. At the same time, the highs of the range and daily moving average resistance levels were close at hand on the upside and the market hadn't really corrected long enough by the time lunch hit to allow for a strong breakout higher. The 12:00 ET reversal period did hold perfectly, along with 15 minute 20 sma support, but due to the volume remaining very light, the market was never able to shake its support level and only crawled higher into the afternoon. This meant a severe shortage of intraday setups, although we did get some decent morning breakouts with MOBE, JPM, EIX and a few others.

Overall the morning didn't leave me too excited with the prospects for the day. As I scanned the SP100 and NASDAQ 100, the only pattern that jumped out was how the market seemed to be fairly equally split between stocks hitting highs and those hitting lows. In both cases they did so with very small 1-2 minute patterns and chopped around a lot. In other words, there was no strong bias guiding the market. I had to take off for the afternoon for an appointment and luckily got to miss watching the paint dry. I can imagine it would have been easy to get hurt if you hadn't been looking at the high risk continuing for the remainder of the day, although I can't see an discernible pattern even in hindsight to have allowed for a trading trigger.

As the day ended, MRK continued to do well, making new highs on the daily breakout. MYL has yet to trigger, but the health care sector overall still catches my eye. Continue to anticipate higher risk as the week advances. The range from Tuesday does stand a nice chance for an upside breakout though. This makes for higher odds on a trend day, but the daily moving averages overhead could cause a problem with that.

Economic Reports and Events
Apr 06: -
Apr 07: Initial Claims 04/02 (8:30 am), wholesale Inventories for Feb. (10:00 am), Consumer Credit for Feb. (3:00 pm)
Apr 08: -
Apr 11: -
Apr 12: Trade Balance for Feb. (8:30 am), FOMC Minutes (2:00 pm), Treasury Budget for Mar (2:00 pm)

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 stocks' earnings dates 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
Apr 06: AA (A), BBBY (A), LI (A), MON (B), SCHN (?)
Apr 07: CAN (?), STZ (A), PIR (?), RAD (?), RPM (B)
Apr 08: -
Apr 11: DNA (A)
Apr 12: ABT (B), AMTD (B), GCI (?), SOSA (07:00 am ET)

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.