Swing Trading Strategies & Stock Picks Since 2003

2009 is soon to come to a close. What have the last few days got in store for us?
Richard Lehman of Trendchannelmagic.com is keeping an eye as to what the dollar rally may do to the overall markets.

12/19 -- First a few additions: I added an hourly chart on GLD to give added perspective on gold's moves and I also began adding some stochastic indicators on a few of the one-year charts to give a momentum perspective. In addition, I changed the order on a few charts so that multiple time frames would always appear from shortest to longest.
The big event this week was the dollar's continued rise and breakout. That suggests that while it may back off in the very near term, it is finally shifting momentum to upward. Gold has been the most dramatically affected item by the dollar's rise, and oil to a lesser extent, but the equity markets have held up suprisingly well, continuing to trade sideways in large caps and actually higher in small caps. But if the dollar is going to spend a few weeks or more gaining strength, that will likely tip the equity markets into a more meaningful correction into the new year.
For now, the momentum on small caps is better than large (and that should continue into January, regardless of overall market direction). If the dollar can temporarily recede again, the equity markets could stage something of a Santa Claus rally, but the longer term momentum is still sideways at best, so a big up move is unlikely.
12/17 -- The market has now tipped its hand, helped by the dollar's breakout to the upside. So far, the breaks are primarily at mini level, but some damage to main short term channels has also occurred in certain sectors. Large caps are still in their sideways channel, but risk-laden items like small caps and financials are doing poorly. This may well become a larger correction for equities, which may extend in time and price into January, but for now, we need to watch the short and long term support lines.

Yong Pan of Cobrasmarketview has seen a larger shift to the bear side on the intermediate time frame for the markets

Interesting appraisal on the Monday effect - bull call?

But heed the warning, the fun may not last for long:

Put:Call options ratio to S&P also on a 'sell'

Matthew Frailey of Breakpointtrades has the monthly S&P up at RSI resistance with the likelihood of a neutral doji to finish the month not unlikely.

Joe Reed is keeping a track on bank failures for this year - 141 for this year!

Nice chart showing the underperformance of the latest Summation Index bounce
Joe's Dow chart shows the importance of 10,250 as support:

Gold and Silver Index finds support, but not all momentum indicators are oversold:

Michael Eckert of EWTrendsandcharts kicks starts a new five wave down for the Russell 2000 - will this mean the breakout I talked about will not hold?

Two scenarios for the S&P on Monday:

But Robert New is looking at support at the 50-day EMA:

Certainly there are more cracks in the market than have appeared in recent weeks, but the trend remains dogged and there have been no significant technical breaks. Not sure we will see them this week, but the first week of the New Year could be a busy one.
Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com. November 2009 has seen a significant upgrade and is on course to becoming the eBay of finance with our new Beta MarketPlace and a new rich internet application for finance, the Zignals Dashboard. Zignals now has new fundamental stock alerts, stock charts for Indian, Australian, Frankfurt and soon Canadian stocks, tabbed stock list watchlists, multi-currency portfolio manager, active fundamental system stock screener and trading system builder. New Forex and Index data.