S&P 500

S&P 500 20 Minute: This is the S&P 500, 20 minute chart that captures the last month of trading—including the most recent bottom and the current countertrend rally. I’m considering the bottom that was reached on February 5 as the bottom of wave 1. Then, over the past 6 days of trading, the market has set off on a countertrend rally that has yet to reach the 38.2% retracement level.

Let’s talk about sentiment.
Last week was the worst market week since March 2009. Similarly, the three-day decline from Wednesday through Friday was the worst three days since March 2009. The market is now officially in the red for 2010. And the persons we’ve identified as market props (Bernanke, Geithner, etc) are now beginning to come under intense fire for their actions.

Is the S&P 500 Cheap?

It was a light volume, holiday-shortened week for the markets the past week, and the S&P 500 stayed within its tight trading band of 1,083 and 1,112. The lower end of the trading band is also where the 32-day moving average coincidentally comes up. Click here for a tutorial on how moving averages come into play in stock trading.

For most chartists, users of technical analysis, the wedge is a pretty common and favorite pattern for most. Mainly because the flight of a stock price conforms nicely to how they move. Combine that with easy to notice price targets and stop points, you can start to understand why people love the pattern so much [...]

The stock market looks tired after rallying for seven straight months. This article presents three stocks that can zig even if the broad market zags.
Read: Strong Buy Stocks for Today's Stock Market

While S&P 500 companies are having no trouble reporting positive earnings surprises, performance on the revenue metric is a different story. Read more on S&P 500 stocks and earnings.

A late day reversal on Wall Street has earned the NASDAQ its third distribution day within this period. In addition, most of the indices printed key bar reversals for the session, an extremely bearish 1-day reversal pattern. Take a look at volume on the SPY during Wednesday's session.

The equity markets closed lower on Friday, with the NASDAQ picking up a distribution day. The "Tech Index" also filled the price gap from the session on 10-14-09.

Yesterday I produced a video on how to trade divergences in the S&P 500. Today, I'm following up that video with a divergence I see developing in one of the biggest tech stocks in the world, Apple (AAPL).

A Tale of Two Market Calls

The following discussion took place in the Hamzei Analytics High Frequency Trading chatroom on September 23, 2009. Names in this transcript has been changed for privacy purposes.

AFTERNOON DISCUSSION: Post FOMC Announcement a possible shortterm top in the ESZ9 Futures contract.

Observers such as legendary fund manager Mohamed El Erian believe that the financial crisis has precipitated a sea change that will take the West to a ‘new normal.’ That would be a problem. Meanwhile, however, Wall Street has returned to the Old Normal and is on track to reach record levels of compensation this year.

Weekly Charts With Fibonacci Retracements For The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 Index, Power Shares QQQ Trust September 12, 2009

At the end of the week over the weekend I like to look out and in to see where the markets are in reference to where they have been. I also plot the new weekly support and resistance levels and of course the levels on the dailys.

Like I said earlier I love to catch failed new highs short and failed new lows long as long as they line up with the 60min charts. In this case they did because the 60min held and bounced off the 50sma.