Good morning! Despite a surge of mergers, the market stalled on Monday as market participants await this week's much-anticipated FOMC announcement. Among the most noticeable acquisitions are Fisher Scientific Intl. (FSH) by Thermo Electron Corp. (TMO) and Golden West Financial Corp. (GDW) by Wachovia Corp. (WB). Legg Corp. (XPRT) is also set to acquire BMB Mack Barclay, Inc., Online Res. Corp. (ORCC) is acquiring Princeton eCom, and an offer for Inco, Ltd. (N) was made by Tech Cominco, Ltd.

Monday began with a bit of upside out of the open, continuing the bullish bias we were seeing heading into Friday's close. The indices didn't get far, however, before the already light volume began to dry up even more. By the end of the day the Big Board posted a "mere" 1.55 billion, while the Nasdaq volume came in at 1.75 billion. You can see a representation of market volume as shown on the daily charts of the SPY, DIA, and QQQQ below. The result was very modest action in the market throughout the day, although a number of stocks still had strong intraday moves, providing pockets of strength for daytraders. CMED, DXPE, SNDK and COGO are examples of nice mid-day breakouts, but most of the action was pretty scalpish.

The morning upside in the indices stalled going into the 9:45 ET reversal period and began to top over the next 45 minutes. The Nasdaq Composite formed a small Avalanche on the 2 minute charts while the Dow Jones Industrial Average put in a double top on that same time frame. These reversal patterns followed through quickly into 10:45 ET before stalling at the 15 minute 20 simple moving average. The selling continued with an early attempt at a bear flag around 11:15 ET. The larger 15 minute support held, however, and the market began to turn back around ahead of the afternoon.

The indices stalled at the 5 minute 20 sma, forming a Phoenix pattern as they moved higher out of a reverse head and shoulders on the 5 minute charts. This triggered into 12:30 ET and took the market back to the early morning breakdown levels before 13:00 ET. They were unable to bring in much interest, as shown by the lack of volume to confirm the upside breakout attempt. The stronger S&P 500 and Dow tried again out of the 14:00 ET reversal period, but the move once again lacked strong interest and the indices pulled back somewhat ahead of the close. The result was very little change in the market as compared to Friday's closing levels. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained a mere 6.8 points, while the Nasdaq Composite posted gains of 2.42 points. The S&P 500 closed a hair lower, down 1.10 points.

Tuesday will also likely be a slower day. I will continue to focus primarily on intraday setups and just take things easy. You don't want to press too hard at a time like this although there will still tend to be some decent intraday opportunities. At present the market is looking a bit more bearish into Tuesday morning, so I'll be looking more for shorts into the open on premarket losers and early morning losers.

Economic Reports and Events
May 09: Wholesale Inventories for Mar (10:00 am)
May 10: Crude Inventories 05/05 (10:30 am), FOMC policy statement (14:15 pm)
May 11: Business Inventories for Mar (8:30 am), Initial Claims 05/06 (8:30 am), Retail Sales for Apr (8:30 am), Retail Sales ex-auto for Apr (8:30 am)
May 12: Export Prices ex-ag. for Apr (8:30 am), Import Prices ex-oil for Apr (8:30 am), Trade Balance for Mar (8:30 am), Mich. Sentiment-Prel. for May (9:50 am

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
May 09: SIL (?), AZPN (A), ASYT (4:00 pm ET), BIDU (A), ITU (?), CELL (A), CVC (B), CSCO (?), DESC (A), DYN (B), ENTG (B), FCH (A), GTI (B), HSP (B), IDTI (A), LAMR (?), MTSN (A), MYL (A), NMTI (B), PGN (10:00 am ET), SAPE (A), SLE (?), SINA (A), TMTA (A), LCC (B), DIS (?), WGR (B), WFII (A)
May 10: WEL (?), RIO (?), DCEL (?), DQE (B), ENER (?), HJT (B), GSS (A), IVAN (?), MIR (?), MT (?)
May 11: AEM (A), BGO (A), DT (?), EXPE (A), JCP (?), KSS (?), PBY (A), UBB (?), URBN (06:00 am ET)
May 12: DRS (B), PBR (?)
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.