Searching For Direction

With a late day breakdown, the gains achieved in yesterday afternoon's bold rally quickly evaporated. Failure to take out and hold S&P 1490 kept the bulls restrained.

I said yesterday that today would provide a good test to how much conviction and greed there was in this market but it appears I overestimated today's potential. I personally would have liked to see either a strong breakout or more severe breakdown, but we didn't end up with either one. I'm sure the bulls will argue that holding the majority of the gains was a positive sign while the bears will argue that yesterday was just a dead cat bounce. In my opinion, this entire trading session raises more questions than answers and I'd be a fool to tell you anything different.

Tomorrow we have a ton of economic data to sort though along with options expiration funk. I wish I could say I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm not. The market is in a tough spot here and until we get a good read for whether the bulls can muster the firepower to move ahead, we could see much more of the same as we did today and that's not especially an encouraging thought.

Rest up and we'll do our best tomorrow.