I hesitated to make any sort of response before the FED announcement. To me, it is as close to pure gambling as you come in analyzing markets. All I need to see pre-announcement are FFFs and I shut out the rest. Once the announcement is made, I think about the language, and I see market action, the story is clear.
The market action blew right through the 1490 - 1500 SPX resistance to the upside, then today blew right through that to the downside.
When I see markets that go through S/R levels like this violently on both sides, it is a warning that models need tuning. I believe the trading from here until the end of year will defy many models that trade based on which side of the "SPX contour" we are on. There was a big hump at 1490 to 1500 SPX. To either side of it was relatively simple trading. That "hump" has now been flattened, and it is going to make trading far more difficult. Imo, SIFs are now, to use a physics analogy, "superconducting".
On the FED decision, sheesh, I don't know. I am firm believer that markets lead the FED, and not the other way around. The FED then becomes some sort of exponential filter (a special case of a Kalman Filter) and tries to estimate somewhere in the middle. I believe the FED was slightly conservative today, but not terribly so. The FFs rate cut was fine, the discount window needed to be .50.
If things look like they deteriorate fast, and SPX starts nose diving towards 1400 SPX, be prepared for an emergency rate cut. The importance of 1400 is now even more paramount, and 1490 - 1500 SPX is close to being irrelevant.
These are dangerous trading times, imo. As an investor, we buy until the market says it is wrong to buy, and it is only wrong below 1400 SPX.
nitro