what to watch in the final sessions of 2023

Afternoon traders.

We’re in the closing hours of 2023. What a year of trading it’s been!

In this last market brief of the final trading week, we cover exactly what levels we’ll be watching going into 2024.

Let’s dive right in…

Impact Snapshot

• Pending home sales flat in November despite drop in mortgage rates

• U.S. jobless claims rise for second straight week

Market Evaluation

With only two sessions left before the final closing bell of 2023, the Nasdaq is poised for its best year since 1999 and the S&P 500 came even closer to a record.

The labor market has been a bright spot for the economy. The big question is can this trend continue.

Economists expect job growth to trend lower over the new year. The December jobs data will be released next week.

The stock market saw a massive reversal this year after suffering its worst annual selloff since 2008.

As traders ramped up bets the Fed is done with its aggressive hiking campaign and will start easing policy in 2024

Markets Breakdown

As our last newsletter highlighted, the lack of high-impact economical reports and the absence of institutional activity would see a choppy market on low volume this week.

The market remains within the short-term balance area with Tuesday/Wednesday edging higher at the extremes of the balance area but didn’t manage to perform a clear breakout continuation.

As we always mention, meaningful breakouts can only occur with the support of volume. Balance areas act as magnets of price until a catalyst hit the market to bring a state of imbalance and breakout from balance.

We will monitor market’s ability to break from the balance and target a flip of 4843 as support in order to find any meaningful continuation above.

A breakout that is not supported by volume can be an opportunity to trade against and right back into the balance area which would act as magnet of price.

ES

The targets we look for until NY close & Targets to pay attention Tomorrow:

• Upside Levels: 4843/4851/4879

• Downside Levels: 4807/4798/4787

That’s all we got for you in today’s brief.

If you found ANY pinch of value in today’s post, all we ask is that you simply share this Substack with 1, maybe 3 friends.

Enjoy the weekend ahead!

-The QuantVue Team