The market direction after lunch hour basically gave back the day’s gains by 2:40 with the S&P after setting a new all-time intraday high, plunging into the red and the Dow continued to try to cling to positive readings but was up just 6.76 at the time of my writing after being up 100 points earlier. Today is options expiry and what is referred to as triple witching and according to historic trends, this day in March has always had big swings. Let’s take a look.
S&P 500 Intraday Market Direction Chart
The one minute S&P 500 intraday chart below shows the action today. The morning opening push was too fast and too high as it broke into a brand new all-time high for the S&P. From there a pullback commenced which was shallow and ended around 10:30. A second top was formed around 11:30 which was lower than the first. This brought in selling which then pushed the S&P into a new intraday low by 2:31. At the time of writing this there had only been a small bounce but it still looked like the S&P might retest the low point of the day.
Taking Advantage Of Drops
A lot of the drop is nervousness over the new high today but also triple witching and the Crimea crisis which continued to dominate the news. The standoff between Russia and the United State and EU is rattling a few investors who took advantage of today’s new high as an excuse to sell positions and take some profits. I am taking advantage here and there of the drops for some trades.
Market Direction Outlook Into The Close For March 21 2014
Into the close I still think the market direction will close positive but whereas I thought we had a good chance of closing near the highs, it would appear we are getting ready for a positive but lower close.
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