Good day! The market was mixed as we kicked off the new week ahead of Wednesday's Fed announcement. Volume was decent, but the lack of a strong bias I talked about yesterday heading into the session remained apparent throughout the day. The morning and early afternoon showed some restrained strength, heading higher off price support from last week. The buying was very choppy, however, making it difficult to really find a lot of clear cut setups intraday.

The Dow Jones Ind. Ave. showed the most relative weakness going into the day. It found resistance at the 15 minute 20 simple moving average, while the stronger Nasdaq Composite moved higher into Friday's opening prices and the S&P 500 ran into its prior 15 minute highs from Friday afternoon. All of these were reached at the same time as the 10:15 ET reversal period and stalled the initial rally out of the open.

Choppy action in the indices continued as the market corrected off the early morning price resistance. Volume dropped on the pullback, which was helpful for remaining bulls since they were not being replaced by a bearish sentiment just yet. After retracing about 50% of the morning move, the indices were again moving higher. They managed to puncture the prior highs, but just barely, before turning back over again at the 12:00 ET reversal period.

Once again, the volume was lighter on this second correction from highs, although the pace on the selling was stronger than average. The result was a much more gradual third move to the upside out of 12:30 ET. The indices were barely able to break free of their 5 minute 20 sma support and the volume on the upside remained at some of the lightest levels of the day. In much the same way as the lighter volume on the earlier selloffs aided the bulls, the lack of volume on the upside spoke favorably for the bears in the afternoon. The slightly higher high into Friday's S&P 500 high served as a trap into 13:30 ET and allowed the bears a free fall into the second half of the afternoon.

On the 15 minute charts, the breakdown at 13:30 ET was a break in a pennant formation. With a greater variance between lows as compared to highs, the upward slant of a triangle such as this will typically result in a break lower. Exceptions can occur if the pattern is coming out of an extended downtrend. The breakdown resulted in three small moves on the 1-2 minute charts, which took the indices into some initial support at prior lows on the Dow and the S&P 500's 5 minute 200 sma. This hit at the 14:00 ET reversal period and the market was able to then form a larger bear flag that led to a final move into even stronger support on the 15 minute charts with a closure of Thursday's gap in the Dow and Nasdaq and prior 15 minute lows on the S&Ps. The day concluded with a 5 minute reverse head and shoulders pattern that held into the close.

I am expecting things to remain fairly mild ahead of Wednesday. The Dow ($INDU) lost 5.77 points on Monday, while the S&P 500 ($SPX) gained 1.31 points and the Nasdaq Composite ($COMPX) gained 0.16 point. This was fairly insignificant and the intraday bias into Tuesday is not any stronger than heading into the day before. As a result, I will be looking to remain less aggressive at this time and just take things a bit slower than last week.

Economic Reports and Events
Sept. 19: Building Permits for Aug. (8:30 am), PPI and Core PPI for Aug. (8:30 am)
Sept. 20: Crude Inventories 9/15 (10:20 am), FOMC policy statement (2:15 pm)
Sept. 21: Leading Indicators for Aug. (10:00 am), Philadelphia Fed for Sep. (12:00 pm)
Sept. 22: -

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.
Sept. 19: AZO, CBRL, CHAP, CBK, ORCL, PRGS
Sept. 20: BBBY, BMET, KMX, CTAS, CC, CMTL, DRI, MS, XRTX
Sept. 21: COMS, COGN, CAG, FDX, GIS, NKE, PALM, RAD, SCHL
Sept. 22: -
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.