Good morning! The indices opened significantly lower on Wednesday with a gap that was much larger than average. As we seen in the past, while the larger than average gaps will often hold in individual stocks, the opposite tends to occur when the gap takes place in the overall market. In these cases it will nearly always fill, often creating a trend day. This ended up being the case in Wednesday's session. Once more, the tech stocks led on the upside, while oil and metals continued to fall. Neither side looks willing to yield just yet. Oil producers fell 1.7%, while oil services lost 1.3% and metals miners shed 1.2% on the day. Technology hardware rose 1.4%, which semiconductors climbed 1.8%. Other leading sectors included the airlines and real estate investment trusts.

The market didn't begin to recover right away out of the gate. Instead there was a little bit of additional selling until the 9:45 ET reversal zone. At that point the bulls returned as the S&P 500 came into support from Monday's lows and the Nasdaq also came into 15 minute pivot lows from the last couple of days. The momentum on the move off these lows was pretty decent, coming in above average. It remained choppy, however, on par with recent trading and showing a lot of overlap from bar to bar on the 5 and 15 minute charts.

The Nasdaq led the bulls and was the first to close the morning gap just after 10:00 ET. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Ind. Ave. had a bit more trouble filling that void initially, weighed down by the weakness in oil. While the Nasdaq continued to run, they both had difficulty maintaining the momentum and formed 5 minute 2T patterns out of the 10:45 ET reversal period. By 11:00 all three of the major indices were pulling back and beginning a mid-day correction. The pace was a bit strong, but after a brief bounce at 11:30 ET the selling slowed on a second pullback  within a larger 15 minute range.

As anticipated heading into the day, even though there was a bit of a bullish bias, it was difficult for the market to really gain a great deal of momentum. Even though the Nasdaq was quickly at new highs on the week, the buying was actually a bit weaker than many of the intraday upside moves on Monday and Tuesday.

The pace was particularly sluggish as the mid-day range began to break higher. There was still a bias towards the gap closing in the S&Ps and Dow, however, and the market gained some steam briefly after 13:30 ET. The buying did continue into the close, but returned to a more gradual bias. The day ended with the Nasdaq at resistance from prior daily highs and the S&Ps and Dow at 15 minute 200 sma resistance, but still hugging on the daily moving average support that has held throughout the week. The Dow had gained 25.56 points, the S&P 500 rose 2.74 points and the Nasdaq climbed 15.50 points.

There is still a slight upside bias in the market on the 120-minute charts, but with the resistance that is now hitting on the larger intraday time frames it is more likely to see some sort of correction intraday on a 15 to 30 minute charts fairly early on in the day on Thursday. The 15 minute 20 sma intraday will be initial support.

Economic Reports and Events This Week
Monday: Consumer Credit for Nov. (3:00 pm)
Tuesday: -
Wednesday: Trade Balance for Nov. (8:30 am), Wholesale Inventories for Nov. (10:00 am), Crude Inventories 1/5 (10:30 am)
Thursday: Initial Claims 1/5 (8:30 am), Treasury Budget for Dec. (2:00 pm)
Friday: Export Prices ex-ag and Import Prices ex-oil for Dec. (8:30 am), Retail Sales for Dec. (8:30 am), Business Inventories for Nov. (10:00 am)

Key Earnings Announcements This Week
Monday: LIFC, NUHC, and SCHN.
Tuesday: EMMS, GAP, GBX, HELE, LWSN, SVU, VOL, AA, EXFO, OXM, RI, SNX, and WDFC.
Wednesday: ASHW, DNA, and SAPE.
Thursday: CRAI, INFY, MTB, MTG, SRR, CAMP, and IHS.
Friday: No earnings are scheduled
Note: All economic numbers and earnings reports are in lines with those compiled by Yahoo Finance and Briefing.com. Occasionally changes will occur that are made after the posting of this column.