Afternoon Update

Here is a 30 minute bar chart of the past two weeks' day sessions in the e-minis. I commented on this chart yesterday.

Not much has changed. Today's trading shows lower volume and a narrower range than yesterday's - normal behavior for a market that remains stuck in a trading range (two red lines). Volume has shown a general tendency to decrease as the market has traded sideways.

The past two days ranges have centered on the 838 level (purple line). It is worth noting that this is also midway between the 739 November 21 low and the January 6 high at 943. I think the market is now oscillating to just about dead center of this range, a process that Richard Wycoff noted in his work. He called it the process of "sharpening down to a point" because he visualized the price action as converging to the apex of a triangle (on its side).

In any case these narrowing fluctuations are setting the market up for its next phase. I think the breakout from the near term 797-865 range and from the 739-943 range will be to the upside. But in any case the first sustained high volume move away from the midpoint of the past two days will probably indicate the direction of the breakout.