#202509 - priceactiontds - weekly update - nasdaq e-miniGood Evening and I hope you are well.
comment: My line in the sand for bears was 20600 and bears actually got there but the very bullish close on Friday destroyed many bear hopes. Biggest question for Monday is now, does the bear channel hold or will we strongly break above to test the highs again? I don’t know and that’s when I will lean neutral. Both sides have reasonable arguments and the bear channel is valid until clearly broken but Friday’s close was special. 20900 is probably a bad place to trade and I will be cautious on Monday. There are multiple bigger patterns we are currently in. Most recent is the tight bear channel down from last week, which would be broken above 21100. Then we are also inside an expanding triangle on the daily tf where the upper trend lines goes through the ath 22450. On the weekly tf I have two bull trend lines and both could be right or wrong, you never know. The lower one runs a bit below 20000 and that is obviously a magnet market will test over the next days or weeks but I have no idea if we do another leg up first.
current market cycle: trading range
key levels: 21000 - 22500
bull case: Bulls have probably seen enough selling and Friday’s close showed some strength that they want more exposure again. Their first target is 21000 and then break above the bear channel from last week, which would be above 21100ish. Next targets are then the mid point around 21500 and then likely no more resistance until 22000. Bullish ABC move on the chart, which would be my preferred path if we close above 21200 on Monday.
Invalidation is below 20400.
bear case: Bears want to see this as a W1 and get at least another strong leg down or even a third one. What are the odds of that? The last strong selling we had was 2024-07 where nq dropped for 16% over 5 weeks. So a long time ago where we did not correct for 10% or more. Right now we are down 8% in two weeks, which is the strongest selling we have seen in the past 7 months. Bears certainly would have a bit more room to the downside to touch 20000 or a bit lower to hit the bull trend line around 19800 (depending on how you draw it). I’m just having a really hard time believing this is more likely than a trade back up to at least 21500 since we are still inside the bull trend and two weeks ago we were 130 points below the ath. An expanding triangle is likely the more dominating feature for now. Every dip below 21000 has been bought and selling here has not been profitable for the past 2 months.
Invalidation is above 21100.
short term: Neutral. Tough spot. Bears could want more downside since the bear channel is still active until we break above 21100. Bulls see the expanding triangle and two weeks of selling with -8% was enough for them to strongly buy into Friday’s close. If 20k is now resistance, I’d like to short with a stop 21410 for target 20500 or lower. If bulls come out strongly early tomorrow, the 4h ema + bear channel could break and we would likely test the highs above 22000 again.
medium-long term - Update from 2024-02-23: Neutral since we are in a 4-5 month trading range. Still leaning heavily bearish for this year but for now it’s sideways until we get consecutive daily closes below 20000.
current swing trade: None
chart update: Added possible paths for both sides. There is a very low chance that the past 2 weeks were the W1 of a very strong 5-wave series down but until we see daily closes below 20000, I have zero confidence in this.
