Good day! After a choppy couple of weeks the market appears to be trying to come out of its shell. I was hoping to see more of a daily bear flag form, but so far the indices have been rounding off a lows and are not yet showing signs of any daily breakdown. We do have a great deal of weekly and monthly support here, however, and that is helping hold things up. Nevertheless, remain more cautious on Friday since we don't exactly have strong technical buy patterns either at this point.

The action on Thursday was again very erratic, but it was also a trend day. The morning began with a range on the 5 minute charts, breaking first in the NASDAQ out of a 5 minute Cup with Handle around 10:00 ET. The SP500 and Dow Jones Ind. Ave. followed at about 10:30 ET, but it was a sloppy setup and not overly obvious.

Highs hit coming off the morning breakout shortly after 11:00 ET as the SP500 and Dow came into Wednesday highs. This led to a correction over noon as the indices formed a decent bull flag/triangle going into 12:30 ET. The market had a difficult time sustaining its gains, however, and pulled back into the 14:00 ET reversal period before hitting the 15 minute 20 sma and reversing again back to highs into the afternoon. We never did see strong, steady intraday moves on Thursday. Even into the close, the market spent most of its timing bouncing back and forth in a fairly narrow range.

MRK had a tough open on Wednesday, gapping significantly lower into the day. It held the $32 support level though and managed to make it back to highs by the end of the day. If you used under opening lows though, you got whipped out. Overall such action is pretty common lately on swingtrades and it's making for a lot higher risk on them over the last two weeks. I am still not seeing that risk lighten up, so continue to use more caution on them.

Economic Reports and Events
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 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.