It was an ugly afternoon yesterday but the indices managed to stay above their November uptrend lines. They’re getting squeezed between those rising November lines and the falling 50-day moving averages. Something’s gotta give soon. Yesterday the VIX got to within 0.25 of breaking its November low before the afternoon market weakness made it reverse. [...]

The indices remain on the verge of breaking out above their December highs. Let’s see if the options expiration games can help to do the trick. On Today’s Calendar: 10:00 — Philadelphia Fed 10:00 — Leading Indicators More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic Potential swing trades: See one [...]

The futures are getting jerked around by news on the auto makers’ bailout. They were very weak to start the day after the vote failed to pass the senate last night. Now they’ve gained some strength on news of the President being willing to tap the TARP. This reminds me a lot of what happened [...]

Yesterday it felt like we were back in a market with normal volatility levels. But the VIX, which is still in the fifties, says otherwise. There were a lot of NR7s made yesterday, so perhaps that was just a slight pause before we get back to range expansion. Given the indices’ overbought stochastic readings and [...]