Thursday stock market forecast

The Hoot 
Actionable ideas for the busy trader delivered daily right up front

• Thursday higher only if ES breaks above its pivot, else lower.
• ES pivot 2074.67.  Holding below is bearish.
• Friday bias uncertain technically.
• Monthly outlook: bias higher.
• Single stock trader: VZ now a speculative swing trade buy.

Recap

These small movement days are difficult to call and Wednesday was no exception. I was wrong once again because the Dow did not rise, instead it fell 56 points. And on top of that , it's time for another Night Owl Lite because I just plain ran out of time today to put together the usual post and so I will simply present the conclusions without all of the yakking. For all the good it's done lately this will probably be just as well.
The technicals

ES daily pivot: Tonight the ES daily pivot falls again from 2073.83 to 2074.67.  .That till leaves ES below its new pivot but just barely.  So this indicator turns nominally bearish but it is definitely in play tonight.

Accuracy: 

Month    right  wrong  no call  conditional  batting   Dow
                                             average  points
January    8      6       4           1       0.563    627
February   6      4       5           3       0.692    183
March      7      6       5           4       0.647    976
April      3      8       7           0       0.273      1
May        6      5       5           2       0.615    581
June       8      6       3           4       0.706    552
July      10      1       5           4       0.938   1212
August    10      2       3           2       0.857   2314
September  7      4       8           1       0.667   1404
October    7      7       5           1       0.533    538
November   1      4       2           1       0.333   -397

     And the winner is...

There has been little direction to the markets the past two days.  However, tonight ES appears to be finding some support as it puts in a bullish piercing pattern.  On the other hand, the VIX is doing the same.  The cautious thing to do here is simply call Thursday uncertain but I'm groing to try another conditional call: if ES can break above its new pivot by mid-morning Thursday, we'll close higher.  If it remains below though, we close lower.

Single Stock Trader

After putting in a hammer last Friday, Verizon put in a second one on Monday and followed that with a third one on Tuesday, each one lower than the one before. Wednesday was the first day that Verizon actually posted a gain, snapping a seven-day losing streak. This was significant because it's also the first confirmation of any of these hammers we've seen and also one that broke out of the steep descending RTC for a bullish setup. It also sent the indicators rising from extreme oversold levels and that puts us very close to the kind of swing trade buy that I'm looking for. The only thing that doesn't make this a 100% trade is the fact that we had a narrow spinning top on Wednesday instead of an outright bullish candle. But I will nevertheless bless this now as a buy for the adventurous.