Here is the weekend look at the ES/SPY going into Mar 7-11. Just wrapped up another volatile week of choppy price action. The ES, like the NAS is now stuck in range trading between 4250 and 4400 just below the 21 ema. Price broke briefly above the key ema on Thursday, but was quickly rejected to the down side closing Friday about 3% off the weekly high.
Going into this week price is stuck in the middle of the sideways range and will either chop within the range or breakout one way or the other. I will be watching the 4250 level below and the 21 ema above. If price breaks down below the 4250 level I would look for move down to the Feb 24th low at 4100. If price break above the 21 ema I would look for move up to the 200sma downward trendline.
The ES/SPY continues to be in a down trend and my bias remains bearish. This market is very hard to read and tough to trade. The challenge is that in this volatile environment any positive news could cause and explosive move higher. The only way to limit risk in this situation is to focus on day trades. Any stock or instrument held over night is subject to massive gap risk. For this reason almost all my trading activity has been focused the futures market. For day trades in stocks (if you do not trade futures) I would focus on Growth names for shorts and the XLE, XLP & XLU sectors for longs as well as precious metals. The indexes remain weak due to the drop in the highly weighted Mega caps names, but there is a lot of underlying strength in the less weighted sectors I listed above.
This is a tough period to trade. I recommend smaller and shorter time frame trades. This is not a time to go in heavy as you can get your face ripped off at any time by a big unpredictable reversal.
Data on Wed/Thursday will be key this week. Watch Crude Inventories and the CPI data.
Weekly Events...
Monday...
Tuesday... International Trade Earnings from: DKS, WTI, YEXT
Wednesday... Crude Inventories Earnings from: THO, CRWD, MQ
Thursday... ECB Interest Rate, US CPI, US Jobless Claims Earnings from: AG, JD, BLNK, DOCU, ORCL, RIVN, WPM
Friday... University of Mich. Sentiment Earnings from: BLDP
Bullish Notes:
Oversold conditions
21ema within striking distance
Possible positive news swing
CPI print hints and peak inflation
Positive earnings momentum
Bearish Notes:
Ukraine crisis worsens
13000 level is tested
CPI print is very high
Continued spike in OIL prices stoke infation fears
VIX spike