Trading Plan for 4/23

One more reminder… for Saturday’s Strategy Session. It is linked from the blog’s sidebar (not held in the usual weekly chartroom), lasting an hour, beginning at 9:30am ET.

Pattern points… (Setups and technicals)[pay]
Friday’s cash session close was barely 2 points above Thursday’s close. It may as well have closed flat. More important is that Thursday’s late bounce extended to fresh highs, and that the session never dipped into negative territory. A lot of buying pressure was expended intraday, gaining no traction for the effort.

The intraday bounce may have refueled sellers, more than they were refueled by Thursday’s late bounce. Maybe not. Expiration doesn’t necessarily express those sort of motivations. But the session was not accumulative, and any ground covered intraday was rendered irrelevant by retracing it all into the close.

Most interesting is the proximity to the trend’s highs. Not only is the trend high higher, it is weeks old — not days old, and only several points higher. In fact, Friday’s expiration session developed entirely under “higher prior lows.” And the context is a trend change that was signaled two weeks ago. None of which is a sell signal, but all of which decreases any attraction to new highs.

[/pay]What’s Next… (Outlook and opportunities)[pay]
Unless Monday’s open were to quickly recover 1377.00-1379.00, then its alternative should be to quickly resume the decline. Not just Friday afternoon’s drop that held 1373.50, or Thursday’s last drop to oversold RSIs at 1365.50. But the trend change’s drop that left gaps outstanding at 1353.50/1357.00, on the way to 1332.00. [/pay]

Look for at least one update overnight or ahead of the Morning Market Tour… My thoughts on the day’s econ calendar are linked here.