Good morning! After a strong rally off the 50 day simple moving average support in the Dow Jones Ind. Ave. and S&P500 and February lows in the Nasdaq Composite, the market managed to hold onto the majority of the gains into the weekend. The Dow ($INDU) closed at 11,279.65 with a 1.8% gain on the week, while the S&P 500 ($SPX) finished higher by 2% at 1,307.22. The weaker Nasdaq ($COMPX) also managed a higher close by 2% at 2,306.48. Despite the strong upside as a whole, however, the market continued the correction from Thursday's highs by falling into a narrow trading range throughout the session on Friday as the buying subsided into the weekend.

While the technicals in the market certainly helped the indices out last week, a lot of it has also been attributed to Fed rate speculation and declining bond yields. On Monday evening (7:00 p.m. ET) the new Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will be delivering a major address to the Economic Club of New York. Then, next week he will head his first Federal Open Markets Committee which meets March 27th and 29th. It seems likely that the FOMC will raise interest rates by another quarter of a percent to 4.75%, but slowing economic data has brought back speculation that an end to these rate hikes is near.

The volume on Friday was pretty average out of the open with selling for the first 15-20 minutes of the day. Support came at prior lows and the intraday range began early. After pulling back up near morning highs, the market came into lows again between 10:30-11:00 ET. This marked a strong double bottom intraday in the Nasdaq Composite, while the stronger selling in the Dow made for a slower recovery off mid-morning lows. In the Nasdaq, however, this was the most steady intraday move of the session. It climbed gradually higher for nearly two hours before finally stalling at resistance from Thursday around 12:30 ET. The Dow also found resistance at the prior day's highs at the same time.

The pace of the rally, while steady, was not extreme. It was similar to the prior downside action on the 15 minute charts and this led to a continuation of the larger range into the afternoon. On the shorter time frames there was swifter action on this correction. After a small Avalanche on the 1-2 minute charts the market fell quickly into 13:30 ET. This brought the Dow and S&P 500 back into the day's lows, but the Nasdaq was still left with more room to move. A narrow range on the 2-5 minute charts from 13:30-14:45 along the 15 minute 20 sma gave way to one more intraday decline that took the Nasdaq into Wednesday's lows which held into the close.

Heading into Monday the intraday bias is still more on the bullish side overall, particularly in the Dow, which has a steady base at highs on the 15-60 minute charts from the last two days. The Dow and S&P 500 are getting close to an equal move on the daily charts, however, so I don't feel this is the best location for new swingtrade setups overall. Instead a focus on 15-60 minute breakouts would be more ideal. Monday does have a better chance for decent intraday trend moves again as well. Some key earnings to watch out for will be Oracle (ORCL) on Monday afternoon and Morgan Stanley (MS) and FedEx (FDX) on Wednesday.

Economic Reports and Events
Mar 20: Leading Indicators for Feb. (10:00 am)
Mar 21: Core PPI for Feb. (8:30 am), PPI for Feb. (8:30 am)
Mar 22: Crude Inventories 03/17 (10:30 am)
Mar 23: Initial Claims 03/18 (8:30 am), Existing Home Sales for Feb. (10:00 am)
Mar 24: Durable Orders for Feb. (8:30 am), New Home Sales for Feb. (10:00 am)
Mar 27: -
Mar 28: -

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 20: CNTF (?), DRI (?), ORCL (A), PTR (?), SHFL (?), WSM (B)
Mar 21: BMET (B), CMC (B), DG (?), FRED (?), GME (B), MKC (?), NKE (A), SIGM (?)
Mar 22: ADBE (A), DRI (?), FDX (B), KBH (A), JBL (A), MS (?), IPG (B)
Mar 23: COMS (A), APOL (B), BGO (A), CCL (?), CAG (B), EGO (B), FDO (B), FINL (4:15 pm ET), FRED (B), GIS (B), POL (?), SLR (A), WTSLA (A)
Mar 24: -
Mar 27: WAG (?)
Mar 28: LEN (B), PAYX (A), RHAT (A), TIBX (A), TIF (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.