Room for maneuver lost as key breakout support disappear across indices

It was a bad day in the end for markets as it appears traders spent the President weekend stewing in their juices.  Not all markets lost support, but there wasn't a whole lot of positives coming out of today. 

The Nasdaq broke below 'bull flag' support, but not enough to register a distribution day - perhaps the best piece of news to come out of today.  Because today's candlestick was a solid red one, I'm not convinced we will see a successful support test tomorrow, but I would give the Nasdaq until 2pm to stage a recovery *if* the index is down for the day; a spike low with a close at or above support would be a positive. 


The S&P requires much more surgery to get back to support.  As with the Nasdaq, there was no distribution to mark today's losses, but to make back the loss doesn't seem like something that would be accomplished in the space of a few days.  There was a 'sell' trigger in the On-Balance-Volume with a pending 'sell' trigger in ADX, to add to the existing one in the MACD.  The index has been underperforming Small Caps for most of 2023, but there is at least a struggle to change that. 


The Russell 2000 had offered itself as the most bullish index, but the prior breakout was undone on today's loss, not to mention, a loss of support too. Adding to the woes, today's selling also ranked as distribution.  At this stage, I would be looking for a test of the 50-day MA.


As a final point, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was ready to breakout, but today's loss did significantly damage to a potential breakout in this index.  The registered distribution hasn't helped either. 


While today's losses did significant damage, one day's hit on the indices shouldn't be too concerning in the long run. I think the worry is we start to see an expanded sideways movement and a continued stall in the development of a right-hand base. 

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Investments are held in a pension fund on a buy-and-hold strategy.

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