With Thursday's vote coming up, it's looking unlikely markets are going to make a sudden move before then. The S&P posted a small gain and helped to relieve the pressure exerted on bulls by yesterday's late selling.

A positive day on suggestions Brexit may not happen invited bulls back to market, Action to this point had the look of a pullback swing low (at least as from Thursday's action), so it was easy for buyers once it was clear there was a strong premarket. What was disappointing was the late sell off, which probably did more damage than Friday's selling, but this can be rectified with a Tuesday close inside the upper part of today's intraday range. For the S&P, today's action meant an inverse hammer crossover of the 20-day and 50-day MAs. It's interesting to see stochastics [39,1] court the bullish midline in what would traditionally be a buying opportunity - so on the chance bulls are able to open the S&P above today's close then today's damage on the intermediate time frame (up to 3 weeks) may be slight.

Bears returned on Friday, but weren't able to undo the action of bulls from Thursday. Volume did climb, registering as distribution, but Thursday's lows held. The S&P turned net bearish with stochastics [39,1] crossing below the mid-line. While relative strength (to the Russell 2000) improved.

This was the perfect day for bulls. Early selling had squeezed any weak holders out of their positions and sucked shorts in, only for the late recovery to have forced newly minted shorts to cover and encouraged new buyers to come in at lows. What's needed next are solid white candlesticks on Friday to confirm a swing low. The S&P remained below converged 20-day and 50-day MAs, but a good day tomorrow should easily regain these moving averages as support. Technicals haven't all turned negative, but slow stochastics are hanging on.