New closing highs are the story of this day. The S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow made new 52-week high closes although all stopped just short of their 2009 intraday highs. I've been waiting on the S&P 500 to move out of its 5 week trading range and it's on the verge of doing so. I guess it's no coincidence that it's reached this point just in time for a Fed meeting. The market often reaches important technical junctures just ahead of a Fed decision. So we're setup for this Federal Reserve meeting to be a pretty big deal. I suspect we'll be above the intraday highs ahead of Wednesday's statement it will be up to the Fed to keep us there.
Volume wasn't stellar today but I guess I shouldn't expect too much ahead of the Fed meeting. For a change upside volume increased although it was below the 50-day average volume on the Nasdaq and S&P 500. We should see more volume starting with Wednesday afternoon's Fed statement and extending into expiration Thursday and Friday.
The small caps finally joining the party by moving above their November high. The price action looks pretty good but I'm not so sure about the volume. My data sources don't show volume for the Russell so I usually judge it based off of IWM and IWO. Those ETFs had below average and declining volume today. So that take s some gloss off of the price move in my mind.
All trends are "up" fo0r the second session in a row.
| Trend | Nasdaq | S&P 500 | Russell 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long-Term | Up | Up | Up |
| Intermediate | Up | Up | 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.
Good observations.....expect the Fed to say whatever they need to say to assist a breakout. Politics are at play and they don't want to see a serious pullback before they ram through health care.