Market Update

There's still a lot to look at, but so far what I see is pretty much in line with last night's internals which were a weak short term oversold condition, ripe for a near term bounce, which as you saw yesterday, is pretty much the only way we'll see distribution..in to higher prices (as the 5 min chart moved quite a bit yesterday alone, the first day of some gains, despite the fact they didn't hold.

 TICK intraday rather ugly at -1250, but some +1000 and a flat trend.

There's improvement on my custom TICK indicator as yesterday would have represented short term capitulation or a short term selling event leading to a flameout of sellers near term which can give the market some room to bounce. Yesterday's short term oversold signals were not that strong, unlike what we saw going in to January 5th, which is the cycle we are still stuck in, the Jan. 5th accumulation for a bounce that hasn't really played out as last Thursday the market was spooked by something, which now appears to be Obama seeking approval to send boots on the ground in Iraq, as we have mentioned before, US forces have been building up on the Iraqi border.

As for intraday charts, they are not clean and clear, there's a lot of mixing between timeframes which is indicative of the apparent change of heart we suspected we saw last Thursday before the small oversold bounce cycle could do much.

 QQQ 1 min is not showing anything very exciting, very close to in line, even for an intraday chart.

The same applies to QQQ 2 min. The two main features are the original accumulation around the 5th/6th for an oversold bounce and the sudden deterioration that looked like Wall St. got some scary news last Thursday and was looking to reduce any long exposure, even very short term bounce exposure.

 And the 5 min chart which is as far as the oversold bounce positive divergences made it. Again, the main features are the positive and since, the negative. The chart is still in limbo so until it gives a strong 5 min negative divegrence, I'm inclined to be patient and keep things as they are unless an unreal opportunity crosses our path.

 SPY 1 min not looking so great so far today, but price is lateral, which is a big change compared to the last 3 days.

 2 min isn't telling us anything currently, but recently it has been negative since the small stage 1 bounce base was put together (white).

 SPY 5 min, which is not in good shape, it's not what you'd expect from an asset that was putting together a bounce base or actually did put one together, but it is not past the point of no return, which is what I'm looking for along with confirmation before making additional moves.

 IWM 1 min does look a bit more positive intraday. I would not be surprised to see an intraday bounce at some point before the close.

 A closer look at the same chart.

The 2 min tells us little right now, except any possible intraday bounce has no support on the 2 min chart, which again, as we saw earlier this week with the exact same set-up, it meant near term upside followed by downside as there's no support beyond the initial move on the 1 min chart.

 And IWM 5 min which is the closest to the point of no return, it just needs a little more confirmation/3C downside.

 I think concentrating on near term charts so much makes you lose track of why we are looking at them, what comes next? So I've put together some of the slightly longer charts, what to expect after this cycle resolves and wraps up.

 IWM 15 min leading negative since the strength of the October lows.

QQQ 15 min needs no commentary. This is why I would use price strength to sell/short in to.

SPY 30 min needs no commentary.

And the longer term, primary trend 6 hour SPY, shows you how bad things are, how close we are to that cliff if not already having stepped off it.