9:14 am Eastern  - Welcome to the March Equinox - the first day of spring (or fall, depending on which Hemisphere you live). The market tends to be affected by naturally-occurring cyclical things like this. Nothing to trade against necessarily, but there's no harm in asking ourselves the question whether this point in time could be when the market begins a big-picture shift. The kind of thing that becomes apparent days or weeks later. Time will tell.

We know that the SPY has spent yesterday and then the overnight session messing around with the daily gap at 659.03 and the 200-period (daily) moving average. This was a likelihood explained in the Weekly Recap / Forecast video published last Sunday, March 15. Now that price is down in this area, what can we derive from current price action? Well, it's been showtime for the bulls for a couple days now. They are entirely capable of getting a snap back going to get price to reset somewhere higher than the 659 gap level and the 200-period MA. To get that kind of thing going, they'll need to get price above yesterday's close around the 659.81 level and establish hourly, multi-hour, and then daily closes above that area. Even better if they can do that same sort of thing with SPY 663. Then that would open the door for the bulls to test the trendline again, which for today is around 668.80 and runs down to about 667.30 by the close of today's regular session.

The other levels above current price are designed for Base Hits. Price has the potential to move a lot more than just 4 S&P points if reactions at the levels work as planned, but we need to be content with pulling the most probable amount of points at the levels, if we want to treat this as a process. If you see good confirmations on longer timeframes charts that give you the confidence to increase your position size and/or hold out for more points, that is trader's choice. Just keep in mind that price swings can be bigger than usual when the market is on edge.

Speaking of the market being on edge, what is the story with the other side of the coin? The bear case is strengthened if price can first get below 653.40 and start closing candles of significance underneath. The level itself at 653.40 can be tradeable under the right conditions. It has a better than 50-50 chance of providing a bounce - they have already bounced price there a couple times in the premarket. But it's also a gauge. If it doesn't hold and price gets under and starts closing under 653.40, then the bears could have the upper hand at that point. The real bear axis is 645.30 for today. That is a place the bulls need to play defense if price gets down there. Once again, price can go anywhere today. Yes, we've had a mostly bearish 4 to 6-weeks so far. But if something sparks the market the right way, the bulls could try to snap price back up to higher targets. 

One more thing to point out is that since today is Friday and it's an important options expirations day for equities, indexes, ETF, etc., as well as the last day of the March ES contract, interesting things can happen. Where they close this week will be important. Note that the weekly 50-period moving average for the SPY is around 644.20 right now. Could that be a big-picture target where price bounces? Maybe. It could also be a breaking point for the bulls. Nothing to worry about now, until or unless price gets down there. It's just good to be aware of cyclical timing events and big-picture potential targets. Buckle up, in case things start moving. Trade well today!

Trading by the Ticks & Trades Strategy, here is where you would have landed for the day:

We got our answer for the question posed in the last Weekly Recap, posted on Sunday, March 15. The market did tank somewhat this week. But was that a surprise? Not really.

Today, by following the Game Plan from this morning and sticking to the rules, you would given some money back to the market today. The first level to be hit after our 15-minute window opened was 654.46. Price had already come down near the level and bounced at about 9:40 am, but since we're following rules, there was no long trade against 654.46 until it hit the level at 9:51 am. Price stalled a bit, but not enough bounce to pull a Base Hit. When price fell, it got out of the money and hit our 20-point max loss limit before the next tradeable level was hit. The axis level / gauge level of 653.40 was not traded per the Game Plan from this morning. 

Then price was pulled down into 651.97. The long trade at 10:14 am handed over a Base Hit. At this point, we were getting clues that lower prices were coming because they couldn't get price above the axis level of 653.40. As we stated in the Game Plan, if price were to start closing under that level, the bears would an easier time pulling price down more.

When price came into 649.22 and hit it at 2:23 pm, the long trade there resulted in a quick Base Hit. Price kept falling and got all the way down to 645.30. That was an important place the bulls needed to defend and they did. But the level was hit within our 30-minute no-trade window. Usually, reactions at the levels within the last 30 minutes of the regular session can be unpredictable. For what it's worth, I took the trade at 645.30 at 3:38 pm. I couldn't resist. Pulled about 10 points before taking profit.

Per the rules, a total of -12 ES points for the day.