The victory for the bulls isn’t as major as it might seem based on the almost 3% gains in the indices. Today’s rally did nothing but bring the indices back near the tops of their recent trading ranges — right where they were four session ago. The bulls still need to break the July highs to really start making some progress. I know volume was likely skewed by folks staying on the sidelines ahead of the Fed decision but I still would have liked to have seen more volume to go along with the kind of percentage gains we had today. I really think we’ll need more volume in order to sucessfully break out above the July highs.

Trend Table

More whiplash today due to all the moving average crosses.

Trend Nasdaq S&P 500 Russell 2000
Long-Term Down Down Down
Intermediate Lat(+) Down Up(+)
Short-term Up(+) Up(+) Up(+)

(+) Indicates an upward reclassification today
(-) Indicates a downward reclassification today
Lat Indicates a Lateral trend

*** I’m simply using the indices’ relations to their 200, 50 and 10-day moving averages to tell me the long, intermediate and short-term trends, respectively.