Good morning! The market finally managed to break the range its been in since the 21st, but it took some disappointing news from the Fed to do so. After strong buying into the 2:15 ET announcement, the Fed raised overnight interest rates to 4.75% from the previous 4.5%. While this was expected, further wording caused concern that these rate hikes were showing no signs of slowing. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) closed down 95.57 points at 11,154.54. The S&P 500 ($SPX) lost 8.38 points to end at 1,293.23. The Nasdaq Composite ($COMPQ) also fell, finishing at 2,304.46 with a 11.12 point decline. By the end of the day, decliners outpaced advancers 21 to 11 on the New York Stock Exchange and 18 to 11 on the Nasdaq.

Volume remained light heading into the day. The Nasdaq saw the most relative strength, but all three indices held up well throughout the morning. After falling into a narrowing triangle trading range our of the open, the market broke higher over noon, moving back into the upper end of the range of the past few days. The volume picked up a little on the move, but concern going into the Fed reined in the bulls well before the news hit.

The initial reaction was swift, plummeting the indices to new intraday lows. At 14:30 ET the selling slowed, leading to the second post-Fed move. This time around that counter-move was very limited. The indices fell into a range for about half an hour. Then the resumption of the prior trend took the market to new intraday lows once again. The pace was a bit slower this time around, but it was enough that the bulls were unable to mount any strong correction to the selling before the end of the day.

With the rounding action at lows into Tuesday's close, there is decent potential for a bit of upside out of the open on Wednesday. The daily charts still have more room, however, before showing stronger support, so I will still be looking mainly for intraday setups and focusing on both longs and shorts on early morning gainers and losers. DCEL and WFT are two stocks I am watching on the long side.
Economic Reports and Events
Mar 29: Crude Inventories for 3/24 (10:30 AM ET)
Mar 30: Chain Deflator-Final and GDP-Final for Q4 (8:30 AM ET), Initial Claims 3/25 (8:30 AMET), Help-Wanted Index for Feb (10:00 AM ET)
Mar 31: Personal Income and Personal Spending for Feb. (8:30 AM ET), Mich. Sentiment-Rev. for March (9:50 AM ET), Chicago PMI for March and Factory Orders for Feb. (10:00 AM ET)
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 29: RECN (A), RI (A),
Mar 30: ACN (A), ATYT (B), BBY (B), KMX (B), COGN (A), PRLS (A), TXI (B),
Mar 31: -
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.