Tuesday Lower

Yawn - another "uncertain" call and another uncertain day it was as the Dow gained 19 points while the SPX lost 1.37 I've heard of the summer doldrums but this looks like the January doldrums. Even yet another long-winded chest-thumper of a speech by Comrade Stalibama this afternoon wasn't able to tank this market.. So we continue, with the Dow drifting aimlessly higher as the SPX drifts aimlessly lower. When will it all end? We bow down to the chart gods and pray for deliverance. Or at least some direction.

The technicals (daily)

The Dow: Today's ho-hum 0.14% gain belies the fact that the Dow is now on a four day winning streak. This now gives us a decent rising RTC with an excellent Pearson's coefficient of 0.990. And so far the Dow shows no signs of breaking out of that. With indicators remaining stubbornly just shy of overbought I still can't call this chart lower yet.

The VIX: Meanwhile, the VIX finally managed to post a winning day, up 1.20%. But it did it with a red spinning top, suggesting a lack of enthusiasm for pushing higher. Still, today's close at 13.52 is just outside the descending RTC for a bullish setup, and the previous three candles suggest that a bottom has been put in. I'm more comfortable tonight calling for more upside here on Tuesday.

Market index futures:Tonight all three futures are lower at 12:48 AM EST with ES down by 0.19%. After a hanging man last Thursday and a spinning top on Monday, the overnight seems to be providing some direction, and the direction is down. Today's close was just outside the rising RTC for a bearish setup. We' need to close above 1470.25 on Tuesday to cancel that, and I don't think that's going to happen. With indicators now finally looking to have topped at overbought, this chart is now looking officially bearish to me.

ES daily pivot: Tonight the pivot inches up from 1467.00 to 1465.25.. We were below the old number all day and with a downward drift this evening, we're still below, so that's bearish.

Dollar index:Today's 0.09% drop in the dollar canceled Friday's morning star, all the while driving it to oversold levels.There's support after a fashion nearby at 54.69 but with the stochastic still falling, I'd say there's at least a bit of room to run lower again on Tuesday.

Euro: And the euro seems to be ;lagging the dollar by a day. It put in its own spinning top today, closing on its upper BB again at 1.3385. However, it is moving decidedly lower in the overnight, down 0.18% already and that is' so far at least, confirming the spinning top as a bearish sign for Tuesday.

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Transportation:And the trans continue to roll on with a four day winning streak of their own, up an impressive half a percent on Monday. The indicators remain overbought-broken and we remain in a rising RTC, so still no signs of a top here yet.

Sentiment: Once again it's time for the latest weekly TickerSense Blogger Sentiment Poll. We continue to track the poll to see how well it performs. Here's the final cumulative list for 2012.

Again, the SPX number is the closing price of the S&P on the Friday before each new poll comes out. The "NightOwl" column is how I voted. Since the poll is for 30 days out, after the first four weeks we're able to see how well we did. This week we see that I voted bearish four weeks ago, so that was a miss. Therefore, as we fill in the last few calls for 2012, I am now 29 for 51 or 57%. I will remove all the 2012 entries after next week when we have a complete chart for the year.

This week we're getting a very large bull-bear sentiment spread, as bearish sentiment has now dipped to the lowest level in over a year while bullish sentiment continues to rise. This is beginning to look contrarian bearish to me, and I say that admitting that I voted bullish in this week's poll. I'll revisit my stance in a week.