Mailchimp, our primary email publisher, had an outage this morning and was just restored. This delayed our morning forecast from being emailed. However, if you don’t see an outlook before the open in your email, don’t hesitate to check our website at www.bluprintquantitative.tempurl.host. Click the “Morning Outlook for Day Traders” category and the outlook will be there, even if the email forwarding service is down. This is the first time we have experienced this, so hopefully it will be the last. The outlook is published regardless. The original outlook is in italics below. I might as well update it, now that we have some market data behind us.

Overnight distribution is relatively balanced so the issue this morning is whether or not we can trade out of the range on increased tempo and stronger internals in either direction. Both extremes of the overnight range have potential go/no-go breakout implications.

Buyers remain firmly in control. The market is acting exactly as it should when it is deeming accelerating prices to be fair. A liquidation break would be healthy at some point to further strengthen the market. Investor focus will be shifting to earnings now.

If the break is higher, monitor for continuation and look for contextual underpinnings to be confirming. Should it be lower, expect the same if there is to be any tradable follow-through and target yesterday’s points of control.

Your edge is your market-generated information and narrative. Your M.G.I. is comprised of price events that happen and price events that should happen but don’t.

Now for the update. the NASDAQ 100 got the liquidation break anticipated, and this is healthy. It is coming into the top of its recent breakout range at about 13850. If a buy signal otherwise presents for you in this area early enough today, it may be a good place to go long for the rest of the day. We are not there yet, but the decline is accelerating vertically which usually indicates exhaustion. Incidentally, the XLE is looking interesting on the daily chart, with the potential double bottom in place.

The S&P 500 is holding up better, boosted by energy and financials, on the heel of some nice bank earnings this morning. Earnings announcements will have a greater influence as we move forward over the next few weeks, the end to which likely will bring us the nominal 18-month cycle peak. Today smacks a bit of the XLE and XLF climbing at the expense of the NASDAQ 100 – but we will see of that is more than a one-day wonder.

A.F. Thornton