We had a very interesting week this past week, explains Avi Gilburt of ElliotWaveTrader.net.
It again outlined for me that people simply cannot overcome their emotions, especially when it comes to the stock market. So many of you are following the CPI, unemployment, GDP, etc. Yet, none of that has helped you on this rally. If anything, it has made you miss this 12% rally over the last two weeks. And, when Amazon's (AMZN) earnings came out, many of you were sure the market would surely drop.
Yet, as the market was developing a near-term topping structure on Wednesday and Thursday, my primary analysis was suggesting the strong potential for a pullback before we continued higher to the 3900+ region, which was my next target for the S&P 500 (SPX).
And, when the market declined in the after-hours session following the Amazon earnings announcement on Thursday, many were certain we were starting another larger leg to the downside. Most were quite sure that Amazon was going to bring the market down again.
Yet, in the analysis I provided to our members that evening, I noted the following:
It's an interesting scenario we have on our hands. ES and SPX have patterns that are a bit different. What is really interesting is how the market seems to fill both patterns at the same time even though they differ.
For example, tonight, we came back to the pivot on ES, which is lower than the one on the SPX, since the ES had a lower second wave relative to the SPX. It is quite possible that we will complete this pattern tonight—if it has not already been completed in ES. There is potential that the spike-up we saw earlier was the wave iv of the c-wave, and the lower low was the fifth wave of the c-wave. If this holds, then we will not likely see any evidence of the decline in the SPX tomorrow.
While the technical wave jargon may seem a bit foreign to you, focus on what the wave structure told me about what I expected the next day: "If this holds, then we will not likely see any evidence of the decline in the SPX tomorrow."
Not only was I outlining the specific support the futures had to hold in order for us to continue higher towards the 3900+SPX target I presented to you in my article last week, but I also specifically said that if we held that support overnight, we would not even see any evidence of that decline when the market opens the next day. And, as we now know, the market opened exactly where we closed on Thursday and continued higher to our next target.
And these members' posts summarized what many of my members said on Friday:
"Thoroughly impressed, I would've never called the market going up this morning after AH action yesterday on my own."
"In the first year I had the service, I might have been foolish enough to wonder whether you were crazy. Those days are long gone..."
While some of you may view me as simply being lucky, or practicing some kind of "chart magic," I will tell you that a market call like this simply comes from experience in using our Fibonacci Pinball method of Elliott Wave analysis to glean information from the market action and structure.
In fact, we had a similar scenario on the night of the 2016 presidential election. While the market was dropping precipitously in the overnight session, I outlined to our members as we were hitting the lows around midnight that night not to be surprised if the market opened where we closed the prior day and then continued to rally strongly. And, if you remember, that is exactly what happened, with absolutely no evidence of the overnight decline being seen in the cash SPX market once we opened the next morning.
While, clearly, the market call made on election night was a more dramatic one, the reasoning was similar to that which allowed me to make the call I did on Thursday night of this past week. If you would like the detailed Elliott Wave reasoning, I provided it in the weekend analysis I posted to ElliottWaveTrader. I can assure you that it is not based upon "chart magic" or some type of voodoo. Rather, there is actually a strong and quite reliable method to our madness.
Now, let's move on to our coming expectations, especially now that we have hit the target I provided to you last week when the market was 150 points lower. I will tell you that the bulls are about to face a very strong test of their resolve.
I am expecting that we can top out in the coming week. Once we complete this upside structure, I expect a pullback to begin in the coming week. Support for that pullback is in the 3785-3830SPX region. And, as long as the market respects that support, and begins another impulsive rally off that support, then my next upper target is the 3971-4015SPX region.
However, if the market is unable to hold that support, then it opens the door to a much deeper pullback which can potentially target the 3650SPX region. This can have a dramatic effect on the manner in which I view the market to the larger degree.
So, let's see how the market progresses in the coming week during its impending pullback.
Avi Gilburt is a widely followed Elliott Wave analyst and founder of ElliottWaveTrader.net, a live trading room featuring his analysis on the S&P 500, precious metals, oil, and USD, plus a team of analysts covering a range of other markets.