Good Morning:

• No surprises – Fed Chairman Powell outlined the script I had suggested the past few days. 
• The script has been that he teases a potential pivot about two weeks ahead of the FOMC meeting. The market goes up into the meeting. Then, with the flexibility provided by the rally, he zaps the market with a hawkish move.
• In this way, Powell has given us an orderly bear market decline and likely avoided the crash everyone feared.
• So the market today has taken out all the important support and is headed into the 80-day cycle trough at mid-month, as forecast by the long-term composites we published last week.
• Price is now at the bottom of the recent balance range at 3925, and the Founder’s group is short from 3995. Breakouts and breakdowns fail about 80% of the time, so we cannot count on a breakdown from balance.
• We will likely cover the short in this range here, we are monitoring the situation, but we would be comfortable shorting again if the price closes below the 3995 level today. 
• As set forth a few days ago, the measured move on the break of 3900 is approximately 3700.

Let’s see what happens – and do our best to stay objective.

A.F. Thornton