The market fell quite a bit from the first day of January and kept going pretty much until midweek this week. The market oscillators got very compressed lower, while the Dow was testing its 200-day exponential moving average. It told me that the market should be done selling for a while, and that a rally should take place, thus, the Spy long that was taken. The real question is once we tested the 20- and 50-day exponential moving averages from underneath, something that basically occurred today, would the market just quit, or would it surprise, take them out and go higher?

We don't know if they'll be taken out with force, but it was solid action today to be sure. We'll get our answer next week on the take out, or not, but we also got slightly overbought today on the short-term charts. On top of that, we got a strong gap up today that wasn't filled, thus, the bulls have added some strength to the technicals, which were very against them coming in to today's action. That has changed to more neutral now. You know the bears have struggled to remove strong gap ups, thus, their job once again became more difficult. The market is making things difficult for both sides now. Today was a great day for the bulls technically, so now we wait to see what early next week brings. That should be the defining moment.

When markets get compressed and move straight down you accomplish a lot with regards to sentiment. The bull-bear spread has moved down 18 points from 46 to 28%. On top of that, there are now major out flows from stocks to bonds. Doesn't take long does it? Folks are running to bonds. That's more than interesting, and shows how little it takes in terms of selling to make that happen.

Before the move up late in the week we saw the Dow correct 8%, the S&P 500 6% and the Nasdaq about 5%. That's not all that much. With that little bit of selling folks are running to get out of the game. Have to love it. This tells me the market shouldn't collapse again all that soon, but you never know. There's probably lots of back and forth for a while, so take it easy on both sides. We may need deeper unwinding back up on the daily charts for a bit longer, but don't bet on that too heavily. For now, at least, we're seeing folks get more bearish.

Support now is at today's gap up level on the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) at 177.72. It won't be easy for the bears to eradicate this level. Only when they do on a closing basis can the bears consider that they're retaking the market back. Anything above that level keeps things neutral. Resistance is at 181.66. There's lots of room to move back and forth for a while just to make things more confusing for folks. If we do weave around for a while, that could allow things to unwind further to the upside on the daily charts, and then we should head lower again, but for now things are quite neutral. Play it as such.

Peace,

Jack

Jack Steiman is author of SwingTradeOnline.com ( www.swingtradeonline.com ). Former columnist for TheStreet.com, Jack is renowned for calling major shifts in the market, including the market bottom in mid-2002 and the market top in October 2007.

Mr. Steiman's commentaries and index analysis represent his own opinions and should not be relied upon for purposes of effecting securities transactions or other investing strategies, nor should they be construed as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any security. You should not interpret Mr. Steiman's opinions as constituting investment advice. Trades mentioned on the site are hypothetical, not actual, positions.

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