While the most exciting moments of stock action can be observed on Hourly and Daily charts, it is always good practice to maintain awareness of longer term technical levels. Here I am laying out a few exciting signs but some potential warning signs that I am seeing, hazardous to bears and bulls alike.
I want to start with the daily chart. It gives us an idea of what potential short term movements we can expect. From a bearish perspective: Following the yellow markings, there was a break beneath the 20 day EMA along with a retest and rejection at spot 1. This was the week leading up to the Jackson Hole speech by Powell. Then, after another attempted bounce off of 3900 on September 6, another rejection of this moving average occurred at spot 2. This rejection occurred after Tuesday’s inflation numbers came out. Finally, there are a few things of note so I just circled them in spot 3. First, there was obvious consolidation on Wednesday at the short term trendline drawn from the June low to July low. This spot also reflects the Fibonacci 23.6% level with Fib top at December market top and Fib low at June lows. This attempted support failed on Thursday (bearish) and closed at 3901. The Friday broke and closed beneath 3900 support (bearish). I’ll be looking for resistance at 3900 to hold. If that breaks, 3960 and 4000 will be important spots of resistance as well.
From a bullish perspective: There is not terribly much bullish, but there are some markers which could cause me some agitation. Circled in red are the lows made on June 17 (circle 4) and Friday September 16 (circle 5). I am specifically looking at the volume bar on each of these days and they are eerily similar. Furthermore, Friday’s lows also coincided (traded slightly below) the medium term trendline drawn from the 2020 COVID lows through June 2022 lows. Lastly, Friday looks an awful lot like a hammer candlestick pattern. A gap above 3900 would be frustrating for bears. Overall, I think the bearish sentiment will prevail, but I don’t want to sweep bullish indicators under the rug.
The weekly chart is a bit more comforting to my bearish attitude, specifically due to the manner in which we are acting at the moving averages. Looking back at this entire choppy drop since January I notated several spots of interest. Spot 1 was the break down through the 20 week EMA. Spot 2 was where the market tried to catch itself at the 50 week EMA. Spot 3 was a successful rejection of the 20 week EMA (previous support, now resistance). Spot 4 was interesting as it was an attempt to recapture the 50 and the 20 EMAs which ultimately failed. After spending a lot of time beneath the now descending 20 EMA, SPX recaptured the 20 EMA and tested the 50 EMA at spot 5 which now acted as firm resistance. Lastly, at spot 6 we failed to stay above the 20 EMA, an engulfing weekly candle which also closed beneath the 3900 breakout level which was set up in June/July. Short term targets I would suggest are the June lows at 3636 or the 200 week EMA around 3560. I am thinking it sinks beneath those levels however. Bearish sentiment all around on the weekly chart.
This might be my favorite view of this market. As I noted in a previous post regarding moving averages, this is the first time since 2009 that the monthly candlesticks have stayed beneath the 20 month EMA for this long. Without being able to retake those levels, the bull market is officially dead (which we Slopers have been saying since January, tip o’ the cap). In addition, the last time SPX failed to retake this level was May 2008 (spot 1). You can see how the rest of that year proceeded and I am expecting similar action. Of course we’d need to see a break of the 50 month EMA at 3560, but considering this market activity and how overstretched we have been, I think that is a strong possibility. Very bearish sentiment indeed. But I have one more chart of interest which I am pondering.
The monthly chart does not interact much with the 200 month EMA. This is simply because it is such a long term period that it is difficult to stretch this average out beyond that. But we can see that the market prices did interact on 3 occasions in this window. First circled are the 40s, coming out of World War 2. This should be no surprise with 20-20 hindsight as we became a major superpower since. The second time was through the 70’s, first with a test at the end of the bear market of 1970 and a second time actually trading down through it in 1974.
Only after retaking this average and trading sideways until the 80’s did the market proceed upwards. In most recent history, we see the first test after the bear market of 2001 (I consider this a test as it is “close enough” when talking about months) and a retest where we again traded down through it in 2009. And so we are here in 2022 where we are stretched to the upside and finding long term market resistance. The 200 month EMA is currently sitting at about 2109, which is every bear’s wet dream right now. I can’t say if we simply drop there in the next 12-24 months, but I do think there is a chance of getting near it to retest (I would drag it up to around 2300 to be conservative as the average will keep moving). And if we expect a long slog of economic activity over the next decade, it is likely the next bear market could take us beneath that moving average. But that is a long time away. Still exciting to think about, no?
So there we have it. In the short term there is potential for some bullish attempts to chop us up. Medium term and long term, however, I think this bear market can continue for a good while, reaching some great targets by end of this year and possibly early next year.