Market Analysis: US

The analysis of last week's US economic events will be available at XE.com later today.

Let's place the SPYs overall actions into a larger, weekly context.  While the market has been rallying for about a year, momentum has been dropping for the last four months, as has the volume flow into the market.  On the larger scale, further upside moves are limited according to this chart.

The daily chart is also getting weaker.  First, the overall arc of the price movements is leveling off, becoming more horizontal.  And while the overall trend is still higher (a rising 200 day EMA) the shorter EMAs (10, 20 and 50 day EMAs) are also leveling off.  Momentum is also dropping and volume flow is weak.

On the 60 day chart, we see that prices have adapted to the government shutdown well.  Prices are trading withing the Fibonacci retracement levels of the early September, mid-Spetmber rally.  From a technical standpoint, the most important element of the chart is that prices didn't crash last week.

Turning to the treasury market, the daily chart of the IEF shows that prices have rebouned, hitting resistance that price points from the early summer sell-off that also correspond to Fibonacci retracement levels from the May-September sell-off.  While momentum is rising, it's also hitting levels from earlier this year.  Also remember that the market is waiting for the Fed to start tapering, so don't expect a strong fundamental bid to take place.  Finally, volume flow is weak.

On the 30 minute chart, notice the strong move on the 19th when the Fed announced it wouldn't start tapering just yet.  However, since then prices have been moving in a slow arc, further confirming the fact that the bid just isn't that strong in the market right now.