Thursday stock market forecast

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

• Thursday uncertain.
• ES pivot 2177.25.  Holding below is bearish..
• Friday bias uncertain technically.
• Monthly outlook: bias lower.
• YM futures trader: short at 17,670.

Recap

Heh - it looks like CNBC must be reading the Night Owl.  Right after I mentioned last night that it looked like "another snoozer" on the way, they had a piece today about how the SPX has gone 33 sessions without a 1% move, the most in over 30 years or something like that.  I think it's a combination of summer vacations, Fed gaming, and pre-election hand-sitting.  Everyone's waiting for some direction from somewhere and they're not getting it.  In the meantime the markets just continue to drift without much direction.  

For the record, last night I did mention that "There's a hint of a downward bias in the charts" and that's about what we got with a 66 point drop in the Dow.

So we'll go ahead and take another look at the charts anyway - for whatever much good that does these days.

The technicals

Market index futures: Tonight, all three futures are essentially unchanged at 12:48 AM EDT with ES dead flat. 

ES daily pivot: Tonight the ES daily pivot falls from 2185.33 to 2177.25.  That still leaves ES below its new pivot so this indicator continues bearish.

Accuracy: 

Month    right  wrong  no call  conditional  batting   Dow
                                             average  points
January    9      5       5           0       0.643    1433
February   9      3       5           3       0.800    1133
March      8      6       6           1       0.600     222
April      6      4       8           2       0.667     416
May        9      3       4           4       0.813     756
June       8      5       7           1       0.643    1393
July       5      6       6           2       0.539    -304
August     1      3       3           0       0.000     120

     And the winner is...

Tonight is playing out like a re-run of last night.  With a continuing lack of direction, there's really very little I can say about the markets tomorrow.  I'm not calling 20 or 40 point Dow moves.  For the record, things are in fact looking a bit on the bearish side, with the VIX perking up a bit on Wednesday but it still isn't anything I feel good enough about to bake into a call.  Therefore I continue to call Thursday uncertain.  Maybe after Labor Day we'll start to see some action again.

YM Futures Trader

No trade tonight.