There's Being Bullish; And Then There's Being Bullish Into the Weekend Bullish

Much like apple picking, pumpkins, the World Series, and shorter days of sunlight, there is something familiar and also traditional about a stock market correction during the autumn months. 

After all, as the late-summer/early-autumn strength of the sun abates, it is almost as if the chill in the air serves to dampen risk appetite among market players, albeit temporarily before the holiday season kicks into gear. 

For now, though, and despite the earlier bounce off session lows, we still have a corrective market on our hands which has not shown adequate signs of a bottom in place. As an example, the S&P 500 Index's ETF, SPY, failed to even close the gap from yesterday's close at $269.56 during this afternoon's bounce. True, we may get up there if we see a final hour squeeze higher today. 

However, that raises the issue of just how confidence bulls are to actually hold sizable long inventory through the weekend. Amazon is still off by 7.5% as I write this, and GOOGL is back in the red after a furious rally to green earlier. The VIX is not collapsing at all yet. And TSLA is doing quite well, but has shows for many months now that it is capable of trading on its own, oblivious to the broad market for a variety of reasons. 

So if bulls show any type of trepidation about holding through the weekend in the final stretch of today's session, I suspect the selling may gather stream much more quickly than many traders realize into the weekend. 

One level I have in mind if the $265 area on the SPY. Not only is it a big short-term level for this week as potential support to hold, but even looking on the weekly timeframe, below, we can see it is an area which bulls felt compelled to defend during the winter and spring pullbacks. This technical circumstance lends itself to the notion that figure to adequately step in here is another blinking red light regarding the long side of this market. 

A high stakes weekly close coming up for a high stakes market, indeed.