As was expected, today was another day of whiplash and lots of choppy action in the SPX. I mentioned in the update yesterday that we were seeing a rise in implied volatility to close out the week and the expectation was a bumpy ride ahead. While SPX did close up today, we saw some pretty sharp selloffs on huge volume, especially at the end of the day.

Starting with our usual daily SPX chart, you will notice that SPX has spent the entire week thus far in the bottom half of the expected range. To me this is a bearish sign, especially given the downside pressure we had last Friday and into this Monday.

In previous sharp down moves, we have seen SPX recover much more sharply and quickly. You can even see some of those sharp up moves in the chart above from November and December. Considering that the low for the week was essentially the opening print on Monday, we have spent nearly 4 days rallying now and still have not even reached the close of last Friday as denoted by the dotted white line.

Moving onto /ES, we can see that once again we failed to really break over the blue line I have been talking about all week. We did not even test the grey box that I mentioned yesterday, and I had said it could be bearish if we don’t re-take that supply zone or get rejected from 6100 again. We slightly broke over but quickly reversed, which again I mentioned could be a bearish signal for the market.

You will also notice that we almost to the penny hit the 78.6% fib retracement from the most recent move down. While that level is rare to find resistance at, it is not uncommon. So far, we have found some very strong resistance between the 61.8% and 78.6% fib retracements. 6100 is a huge barrier right now for /ES, and ultimately also the SPX.

NVDA showed extreme weakness once again today. Yesterday I mentioned that the grey box was rejected and the longer we spend outside of it, the stronger resistance it could become. Today we continued to sell off for most of the day. NVDA did recover at the end, but overall, the signs are still bearish.

We can see that today continued the downside pressure until the end, and we were unable to even come close to the highs of yesterday or close to the grey box. In fact, at one point we were close to the lows of this most recent down move. At this point NVDA has to retake 130 for any sort of bullishness to continue. If we see a break down to new lows, I still have the expectation of seeing the low 100s should that happen.

I also mentioned /NQ yesterday being the weakest index and for the most part that continued today, largely due to MSFT and NVDA selling off. The Nasdaq has to be the leader for any serious bull run to continue and so far, we have failed at every critical level. We did not test the grey box I spoke about yesterday on /NQ which is a bearish sign to me.

Will AAPL have to save the market once again? Afterall, it is the largest market cap stock so perhaps it is fitting that the fate of the rally rests in AAPL’s hands. AAPL reported earnings after the close today and as of writing this post, it is set to open up about $8 tomorrow.

If you have a sharp eye, you will notice that an $8 move up puts us right around $244. As you can see, $244 and change is the 61.8% fib retracement of this most recent move down. Is that where the rally ends? The price action tomorrow in AAPL will be critical as it could very likely determine the fate of the market. If AAPL rejects this key level and reverses, I would expect all 3 major indices to follow, especially if NVDA also shows weakness.

As we approach the end of the week, it is important to note that we have had mostly good economic data and earnings this week. META rallied, TSLA rallied, and it looks like AAPL will as well. The Fed didn’t spook the market, GDP didn’t surprise anyone and most likely Core PCE also comes in-line with expectations tomorrow.

So, what gives? All of this good news has come AFTER the “deepseek crash.” One would expect that the market has long forgotten that and should be rallying on the parade of good news. To me personally, the fact that we have not builds a larger case for the bears long term. If we continue to reject key levels and fail to test and shatter the all-time new highs very soon, I am expecting a huge downturn in the market – at the very least, we take out the most recent lows.

Can AAPL be the hero once more? Let’s find out tomorrow! Good luck!