Tuesday’s Futures Setups

The catalyst for today’s market
was, no doubt, Microsoft
(
MSFT |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating). MSFT is a component of
the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500, and it helped fuel the rally right out of the gate.
MSFT rallied 5.8% after a US judge mostly approved a proposed settlement of the
federal antitrust case against the company late Friday, casting aside calls by
nine states for more stringent penalties. Standard & Poor’s upped the stock to a
“buy” from an “accumulate,” citing the strength of the company’s balance sheet,
the quality of its earnings and the favorable Federal court ruling. This spilled
over into the overall tech sector, which gave the Dec. Nasdaq futures
(
NDZ2 |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating) a positive bias for the day and had it trading as high as 1073, just
below the 1080 level. NDZ2 closed at 1043 up 20.50 or 2.00%.

On the Dec. S&P 500 futures
(
SPZ2 |
Quote |
Chart |
News |
PowerRating), it was an
opportunity for both bulls and bears and anyone in between. The SPZ2 gapped to
906.50 and rallied as high as 925.00 at 1:00 PM EST. Then a pullback occurred
and the SPZ2 broke its 20-period moving average and drifted off for the rest of
the session, closing near the lows of the day at 907.40, a gain of 8.90 on the
day.

Possible
short candidates: