Today is the start of the 2-day FOMC meeting culminating with the announcement tomorrow at 2 pm ET– and after the close today we get the much anticipated Apple earnings. It’s all set up here for the next move…the question, of course, is ‘which way?’.
.
.
(click on any chart thumbnail to expand to full screen)
.
The weekly chart above might help a bit…
If the idea is to go for the bear stops then a push above 2117 would clear out the last bearish holdouts from the July takedown from 2117 to 1851
If, on the other hand, we get something reminiscent of what happened after point 3 on the weekly chart above–we could see a pullback to set a new four bar lower pivot high similar to what happened in November of 2011. If that pullback were to materialize I would expect the pros to go for the stops under the first weekly bar higher low (at 1937.25) after the last higher 4 bar pivot low. That’s what they did last time and it set up the last descending trendline (see red trendline on the chart above). It was the eventual upside breakout of that trendline resistance that set up the last confirmed buy signal (see green arrow after point 3 on the chart above).
*Note that we will get a new higher weekly pivot low at 1861 (point 7 on the chart above) so long as price stays above that line between now and Friday’s close.
.
.
.
It is a tough call here on what comes next… the LT/IT high at 2117 came very close to the monthly bar time/price projection of 2149.25 on 3/16 that has been the ultimate target since the huge VLT trendline breakout (that ended the secular bear market) back in September of 2012.
In a perfect technical world it would be nice to see an eventual breakout above 2117 that would ultimately trigger unanimous spotter signals across the indexes and then be confirmed by the Russell 3000 to give a clean exit for this massive rally leg that started in March of 2009. If and how it gets there is the unknown, but we have a confluence of two events (Apple and FOMC) that could possibly help to provide a smokescreen for a shove one way or the other by the pros.
.
.
.
.
Moving in to the daily bar/range chart; the light green ST trident channel that I pointed out previously continues to track the midline of guidance by the pros. The next daily targets higher are the open gap at 2105.25 and then the buy-to-cover stops above 2117.
Underneath, the first trailing stops for bulls, after the big breakout spike on 10/22, are currently sitting under 2007.50. It would take a move below that line and a break of the bottom rail of the ST trident channel to kick off significant selling and that correlates nicely with Stops and Target’s ST primary trend line at 2011.75
It’s up until it ain’t, but we have some significant ‘news and noise’ coming–starting with the Apple announcement after the close today–so head’s up.
…my .02
.
.