Technical Outlook: Listen to the Market

I'm sure Thursday caught many investors by surprise, as the markets plunged lower following Wednesday's weak attempt to rally after the Fed's announcement that they would leave the Fed funds rate alone.

The carnage was across-the-board, as it took all of the major indices down over 2%. The worst damage was the Nasdaq 1000's 4.06% drop, which I cautioned investors about last Friday.

This time the damage wasn't just done in the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500 like in the past. The weakness also aggressively spread to the Nasdaq Composite Index, small-cap and mid-cap indexes.

I often write that is important for investors to block out all of the talking heads and media that do nothing but comment on the market's day-to-day actions and pay attention to what the market itself is telling you. It will often give clues about what it is likely to do over the short to immediate term.

Those clues were present last month when I wrote in my column on May 16 that after the recent move the S&P 500 was likely to have a correction that would begin anywhere between the 1400 and 1450 level. I stated that the key would be for the S&P 500 to hold above the 1350 level on any correction or we would likely visit or break the March lows.

Now that it is happening, we should look at what investors should expect going into the next few weeks.

To do so, we need to take another look at what the institutional money is likely to do going forward. That is what is going to move the market.