Good morning! After rounding off at lows into Tuesday's close, the market saw a steady uptrend day on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 61.16 points to close at 11,215.70, while the S&P 500 closed up 9.66 points at 1,302.89. The Nasdaq Composite in particular saw a strong move, ending the day at 2,337.78, up 33.32 points. Semiconductors, internet companies, brokers, compurer hardware, and gold stocks all saw nice buying.
The market gapped up slightly into the open and quickly fell into a range. Volume declined as the indices pulled back gradually, creating a strong buy pattern on the 5 minute charts into the 10:15 ET reversal period. This took all three indices to new intraday highs before they began to correct once more into 11:00 ET. This created the third wave of morning upside on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The Dow, which had a more difficult time out of 10:15 ET, also picked up its pace at this time, putting in a strong move until running into the 5 minute 200 sma resistance. That helped the indices fall into a longer correction over noon.
The market created a very narrow range throughout mid-day. Volume decline significantly and the indices broker higher out of the 13:00 ET reversal period. This took the S&P 500 back into the prior day's highs and the Dow into resistance from the last two days. The Nasdaq outperformed, continuing to put in slightly higher highs until hit made it back into the highs of the range that has been in progress on the daily charts since early February.
The overall bias in the market on the daily charts is for more buying, but the Dow is not looking as strong at this point, despite having lead the bulls in recent months. The slowing on the upside into the close on Wednesday also leave room for a correction intraday going into Thursday morning. While focusing primarily on the bulls on Thursday overall, I would continue to keep my eyes open for changes in pace intraday that would give way to more selling since my scanning lists remain fairly evenly distributed between long and short setups.
Economic Reports and Events
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 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.