Thursday's Market Minute: Tech's Turning Point?

Nasdaq-100 futures are looking the softest of the four major indices as we head into the weekend, with the tech-heavy index now down more than 7% after hitting its intraday all-time highs on Feb. 16. The /NQ contract recently saw some chop as bulls and bears battled for the 12400 level, which has often been an important point of support and resistance during the past six months. It now sits near the upper line of a downward channel that began with those same highs, and is looking poised for either an upside breakout or rejection to back within the range.

Bearish momentum has been lessening according to the MACD, while the flattening ADX, often signifying the directional trend (in this case downward), is weakening. There are a couple of interesting points of technical confluence to the upside that the /NQ will have to break through to recapture its highs. First, watch for the intersection of the 21-Day Exponential Moving Average and the ParabolicSAR (commonly used to set stop losses) near 12990. Beyond that, there’s the confluence of the 50-day Simple Moving Average and the lower line of the Linear Regression 50% Channel.

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