It'll Do Until the Mess Gets Here

Opening weakness in equities is being chalked up to a variety of causes, be it the government shutdown dragging on, poor overnight China data, or underwhelming earnings thus far into a brand new reporting season. 

Regardless of the actual proximate cause, though, the nature of the selling this morning is not yet violent enough to anticipate a full-blown rollover, but not quite benign enough either yet to declare it simply a healthy pause after the prior relief rally since Christmas. 

Hence, this market has me acting more like a spectator at the moment, looking to see how the dip plays out the rest of the session. 

On the 15-minute update chart for the SPY, ETF of the S&P 500 Index, we can see stocks essentially marking time sideways since early last week. The test below, initially, looks to be the $256 level, which bears need to crack in order for them to get the ball rolling on any type of talk regarding an outright rollover to fresh correction lows. 

For now, though, as we can see with this chart for context, equities are putting in a fair amount of time backing and filling above $256. The longer that persists while individual names below the surface like Foot Locker (FL) continue to act well, the more confidence bulls are likely to garner for a potential fresh move higher. 

Separately, natural gas is surging higher up and off its UNG ETF 200-day moving average, a chart we observed Friday afternoon. After pulling back in recent months, natty looks to be ripe for a fresh rally a the dead of winter approaches.