Market Wrap (recording & summary)

FOMC days are fun, more so when accompanied by the Fed Chair’s quarterly Q&A. The morning’s sponsorship triggered bias-up but left its 2798.00 target outstanding. It remains outstanding after attacking it to within 2 points at the morning’s retest of the 2796.00 overnight high.

Drifting into the FOMC statement triggered a drop to 2784.50 that extended to 2781.50. The Q&A triggered a rally to 2793.50. Then the nothingness triggered a reversal down to fresh lows. The cash session close was testing 2779.00-2780.00, and futures settled another 2 ticks lower.

The 2783.00-2784.00 area has been relevant support on Monday and Tuesday, as well as being last Thursday’s high. Probing under it when coming within 3 minutes of the cash session close triggered a very last-minute bearish WedEX. Probing it any later or not probing it at all would have triggered no signal.

Narrowly triggering the signal still qualifies, but it’s not optimal. Gapping up Thursday and exiting the open above 788.00-2788.75 would serve by proxy to reverse the signal to passively bullish. Meanwhile, the setup usually doesn’t influence price action until Friday afternoon and Monday morning, but not rejecting it could produce the bigger dip I had described in Wednesday’s First Trade.

Details and other markets coverage are discussed in the post-market Wrap recording here.
Monitor overnight Globex trading in the chaRTroom here.