Sifting through the equities markets' "tea leaves" of VIX, sentiment, breadth and technical charts

If there's something real bullish about these charts, I'd like to know. They look to me like they tell us what we already know, we saw a pullback up today. Let's look at these one at a time. The VIX chart looks like a bullish hammer today - it did drop back under my shallow trendline, to moving average support, then rose again late in the day:


The CPCE chart is interesting, the way Stockcharts.com displays the chart it isn't showing the spike high that it displayed at the end of day Monday. Yesterday it did pull lback, then a bump up today but not to a higher level. CPCE is not at an extreme:


The ISEE reading at 95 is low - note that this afternoon it was at 95. That little ISEE Index Chart that's on the ISE website is a little misleading, in that it displays the information as of the end of the prior trading day (here, March 3). The 95 value is not an extreme, but is low relative to where it was back in late 2008 - so worth keeping an eye on, especially if we do see lower equities levels that could make this start to look interesting:


Here are the McClellan charts for both the NYSE and Nasdaq. There is some positive divergence if you look back a number of weeks, but I don't see that preventing lower levels for these indices - instead, I see that as showing that, when the markets are finally ready to rally, it should be a good rally. For now, the glaring fact is that the Oscillator and Summation Indexes are documenting significant weakness in the markets - not a time to "be a hero" on the long side (yet):

I hope that none of the readers and trading buddies here are trying to "pick a bottom" in these markets - I think that is VERY premature. I can agree that some measures, including Elliott Wave counting methods that mark off each small five-wave down, and Terry Laundry's T Theory chart, as well as pivots from folks like Andre Gratian and Tony Caldaro, are showing that there can be areas for bounces and pullbacks. That's fodder for counter-trend trading, and/or for marking swing points for swing traders to sell (or to sell again). No serious bullish case can possibly be made - whether or not we get to my focus level of 640 (or even below) - unless and until the markets display a specific trend reversal pattern with confirming volumes.

And you're right - that certainly hasn't happened yet! As always - be careful out there, and happy trading!