Quick Market Update

Today feels an awful lot like trying to hold asset prices as high as possible as the last day of Q1 and thus window dressing or the "Art of Looking Smart" in which fund managers sell their worst performing assets and buy the best performing assets for the quarter so when the new prospectus goes out or their holdings as of the end of quarter as filed with the S_E_C_ are looked at by less than sophisticated investors, it "seems" they were in all the right places and out of all of the wrong assets even if that's only true for the last week of the quarter, without digging further, most people will hardly know the difference at first, although the game can't last forever as performance is ultimately revealed and no matter what your S_E_C_ quarterly filing says, if you're not actually performing as a fund manager, all of the Window Dressing in the world isn't going to change that.

There are additional considerations such as the management fees being charged on a quarterly basis and as such, keeping the market or your portfolio as high as possible in to the quarter can make a big difference if only a fraction of a percentage depending on the size of your assets under management (AUM).

Yesterday revealed some very ugly looking charts in to higher prices which is what we expected to see on a bounce and a  simple corrective/counter trend bounce at that rather than some of the more strategic and tactical head fake moves we have seen to get retail to chase prices above a certain well known resistance level like the early 2015 range that was so obvious.

I'll have more in detail as I post futures and leading indicators, but for now, the Dow 18k would be an important level to reach before the end of the quarter to keep investors in funds feeling good about the market. whether that can be accomplished and held is another matter.What is ideal and what is reality are two very different things in a market with so many competing agendas.

As I said above, today feels more like they are trying to hold the market from slipping lower as yesterday did see some real damage.

Whether we can get some higher prices in to the end of the holiday shortened week or not remains to be seen.

I wouldn't say the market is running on an empty gas tank, but it was burning fuel at an incredible rate yesterday off the bounce/base lows which I originally suspected to be two bases that were part of a larger "W" base, the first was noted on March 11th and the second at the recent lows. After more looking, I feel that these were most probably two individual events and I'll show you that in the Index Futures update coming out.

Right now things are slipping fast,  and this is the reason I have maintained since the start, I would NOT try to trade this long, but stick with core shorts and if possible add to them, that in my view is a win/win scenario. Introducing risk by trying to play a bounce long when we are in stage 4 decline, is going against all probabilities.

 Daily SPY unable to make a higher high intraday and showing a taller upper wick on the daily candle meaning higher prices intraday have been rejected on what we already knew from yesterday was distribution in to yesterday's prices/bounce.

Intraday stops are being hit at an important short term stop level, note the volume.

This "could" lead to a bounce as shares are picked up en masse and on the cheap, but a day late and dollar short as the quarter ends today at 4 p.m.

Here's a better look at the importance of this level and why stop are being crushed...

 Near term support is right at the level being breached, it was yesterday's open, today's open and as such a short term support zone in which stops were placed just below, they are being hit right now.

I'll be looking to see if there's any accumulation of the stops being run, but from what we witnessed yesterday, there was heavy distribution in to 1-day higher prices, I doubt anything, even if we can find it, will last much beyond a tactical short set-up and this is a PERFECT example as to why I said I would not play this long, but leave my core shorts in place and if given the opportunity, add to them in to higher prices that give you a better entry with less risk.