Mid-day Update… and Programming Note.

I’LL BE AWAY FOR THE SESSION’S FINAL HOUR. MARKET WRAP WILL BE EARLY AT 2:34 ET.

My signals doubted this morning’s gap up, but I didn’t. Guess who won that duel.

Gapping up above prior highs, maintaining the gap up, and preferably extending it. These are the ingredients to rallying on the morning after buyers fail to gain traction. There are exceptions, but they’re doomed to failure. Despite knowing this morning’s gap up wasn’t extending above prior highs — let alone maintaining — I anticipated a shallow or brief pullback to push higher.

The pullback was neither shallow nor brief. The gap up had failed to trigger my signal, and its reaction had failed to exploit my leeway. But the 2478.00 bias-up signal triggered late, suggesting that the original scenario may be developing, anyway.

Firming through the morning to within 1 tick of the 2480.00 opening print suddenly found itself triggering a sell signal under 2477.00. And probing under the bias-down signal another 6 ticks lower. Then piercing the 2469.00 bias-down target in time to renew the bias-down signal.

And then continuing the plunge to probe under 2458.50 by 6 ticks. All of the probes were also overlapping 2458.50 which warned us the drop may be pausing.

In fact, a buy signal has triggered above 2460.75 has come within 6 ticks of its 2466.50 target. Oversold RSIs at the low require an eventual retest, and may prevent the target or any further recovery. Retesting the low may also resume the decline. There’s no guarantee that a meltdown won’t begin immediately. What I can say is that it’s unlikely to begin the same session that printed a new trend extreme.