April Fool?

04/01/09 3:20 PM EST

We've had a pretty strong session today, with the indices showing signs of another trend day to the upside until 1:00.

Our most sensitive indicators haven't made much progress either way today, after losing a bit of their overboughtedness (is that even a word?) with yesterday's late selloff.  Today's gap down and subsequent rally has twisted them up somewhat and they haven't been able to push into an extreme.

I was looking for some overbought readings among them as the S&P moved toward 812-815 to mark a potential short-term selling opportunity, but it doesn't look like we're going to see those indicators get into "caution" territory today.  The intraday version of the STEM.MR Model is currently at 34% (overbought would be 25% or less), the Cumulative TICK is at +2200 (overbought would be nearer +3500) and the Price Oscillator is at 54% (overbought is over 60%).

The S&P was up well over 1% earlier this afternoon before some selling pressure hit during the past half-hour.  I've been thinking that 815ish would mark at least a short-term peak, and perhaps today's 812 high will be just that, but the following table made me pause:

When the S&P has managed to close the first trading day of April up by +1% or more, then the next three days were up 9 out of 10 times.  The last failure was 70 years ago.

The weeks following those days were more mixed, so this was strictly a short-term phenomenon.  I'm not a big seasonality guy, and this kind of thing always takes a back seat to other analysis, but with the price patterns seemingly neutral and our short-term guides not at any actionable extreme, it makes me want to be less aggressive on short-side attempts if we are able to recover and close near the highs today.