This Week's Pause From the Rally Makes an Alarming Amount of Sense

-- Friday is going to be a pivotal day for the market --

It would be easy to chalk up this week's lethargy to the market just taking a much-needed break. The S&P 500 has rallied 17% since June's low, which is a lot in any circumstances. And, maybe that's all this is... a short break before another leg higher.

Where the rally stopped, however, is telling... and alarming.

Take a look at the daily chart of the S&P 500. Specifically, look what happened on Tuesday, when the rally was finally stopped and reversed. All it took was a kiss of the 200-day moving average line (green), which happens to be right where the index's long-term technical ceiling (blue) also currently lies.

If it were just one or the other -- or if both of these lines hadn't been resistance before -- it might not be worth mentioning. To see all this technical resistance cause problems at the same time in the same place, however, is telling.

And that's not the only red flag here. Look at the lower half of the chart above, where you'll see the S&P 500's Volatility Index (VIX). It too has stopped falling, seemingly finding a floor right around 19.30. If the VIX isn't moving lower anymore, that makes it less likely the market itself is still making good bullish progress.

It's far too soon to jump to a firm conclusion about what's next. We're only pointing it out because it could be a sign that things really are taking a turn. It will take a couple days of lower lows and higher highs from the VIX to assume the worst. Remember though, all new trends take a few days to get rolling.

This makes Friday an important day... potentially. If the bulls decide they'd rather end the week in the market rather than out of it, that's a big deal. In the current environment with the continued potential for a recession on top of the fact that this is typically a bearish time of year, a surge up and over those technical resistance lines means even more when it also says investors are piling into stocks in front of a two-day stretch where they can't sell them... a two-day stretch where bad news can materialize at a moment's notice.

On the flipside, a failure to move higher on Friday isn't necessarily a convincing sign of bearishness. As was noted, it's going to take a couple of firmly bearish days to kick-start a prolonged pullback.

We'll update this analysis in Sunday's Weekly Market Outlook.