Solar Eclipse Saved The Market From Crashing Today

The market needs more solar eclipses.

In yesterday’s commentary I concluded that Monday’s market should be approached with and open mind because 3 of the 4 major stock indexes were sitting on a big support level, and therefore…

Further declines below these support levels could snowball into an ugly decline.

Sure enough, early in the trading session, the SPY, QQQ, and DIA all broke their Friday lows and major support levels, which “should have” precipitated an ugly decline.

Fortunately however, today was the biggest solar eclipse event in over a century in the U.S., and the market did not decline.

As the SPY, QQQ and DIA all broke their key support levels, there were several indicators that the breaking of support had not caused a meaningful level of fear in the market.

For example, the IWM did not breakdown, TLT was not breaking its Friday highs, and the VXX was struggling to rally at all, much less break its highs from last week.

All of these divergences suggested that the market had not gone down far enough below the support to create panic or even much fear at all. And as a result, the decline end and the day was a typical consolidation day.

I covered these divergences in the Weekly Market Outlook video over the weekend. Watch it if you’d like more detail on how these same indicators of the market’s mood began to show signs of less fear of a decline beginning on Friday.

These divergences, are enough evidence to be skeptical of an emerging trend especially when the market is so close to its well defined support level.

These will also continue to be good levels to measure meaningful fear during declines for at least the next several days, so keep an eye on them.

So what does the eclipse have to do with it?

There are two messages in today’s commentary. The divergences you should be watching right now, and how the media or market analysis often associates news as the cause of market direction in a way that is misleading.