Before the Open (Feb 25)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down – there were several 1% losers. Europe is currently down – losses are not as great as Asia. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market. This comes off a big down day Tuesday and a decent inside up day yesterday.
We entered the week with the indexes in no-man’s land and a couple % from support and resistance. The short term trend was up, but the risk/reward for new longs was not very good. After 3 days of trading, we have a small net loss – not too bad.
Here’s the S&P daily. A few more sideways days would better set the market up for another leg up.

But over the last year, each time we got a nice run followed by sideways churning, the market dropped (well it happened all but once). See below.

After today’s close I’ll write about the breadth indicators to see if anything is brewing behind the scenes.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers