Higher Low or Dead Cat Bounce? The Hard Right Edge Doesn’t Care What You Think. | SPX Market Briefing | 12 Mar 2026

Every fake guru on the internet will look back at this week in a month’s time and tell you exactly what they would have done. Crystal clear. Obvious in hindsight. The chart will be right there making it all look inevitable.

The hard right edge doesn’t work like that. Right now, at this exact moment, the honest question is: higher low or dead cat bounce before the next drop? Both are valid reads. Both have evidence. The answer is at the end of a candle that hasn’t closed yet.

What I can tell you is there is nothing dramatically new developing on the indexes – yes, that broken record again. The range keeps doing what the range does. Above Tuesday’s highs and the bulls have a case. Below Wednesday’s lows and the bears are back in control. Let Thursday decide rather than front-running a conclusion.

The poppers, as ever, don’t need an opinion. Yesterday was a scrappy session and it still delivered 6 wins from 6 trades – most of them closed during the live sessions. The system doesn’t need clarity on the macro question. It just needs a setup.

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Market Briefing:

Thursday 12 Mar. Wednesday’s close: Dow -289pts to 47,417, S&P -0.08% to 6,715, Nasdaq +0.08% – energy and tech split the session while Iran attacked 3 more cargo vessels near Hormuz, naval mines now confirmed in the water.

IEA dropped 400 million barrels in the largest emergency release in history – markets barely blinked – Goldman said immediately it cannot close the supply gap. WTI climbed back above $90 overnight after crashing to $77 on Tuesday’s deleted Navy escort post.

CPI printed 2.4% exactly on consensus – pre-conflict data, already described as the eye of a hurricane. FOMC holds March 17-18 at 99.3% probability. The central question this morning: higher low forming or dead cat bounce before the next leg down.

• ES: 6,744.75 / NATHs 7,043 / futures -1.08% pre-market, war premium pricing in

• YM: 47,146 / NATHs 50,611 / Dow -5% YTD, lagging all week

• NQ: 24,862 / NATHs 26,399 / tech underperforming, Nvidia GTC March 16-19 ahead

• RTY: 2,517.2 / NATHs 2,749.2

• GC: 5,181.7 / holding geopolitical bid despite $3B single-day GLD outflow Wednesday

• CL: 91.97 / WTI back above $90 after Tuesday’s $77 crash

• VIX: 25.30 / elevated, war premium embedded, not resolved

• BTC/USD: ~70,535 / holding $70K, Fear and Greed at 13, institutions buying the fear

• NYSE ADD: -661 / negative breadth, risk-off posture

Tag ‘n Turn

Both instruments remain technically bullish and both are sitting inside their price forecast zones – which is exactly the kind of environment where patience pays more than prediction.

The honest tension here is between the technical read – which is bullish – and the macro backdrop, which is not. The system says bullish. The geopolitical picture says caution. This is not a contradiction; it is a reminder that the TnT works on price structure and the macro works on narrative. Both deserve their own weight.

SPX Analysis

The price action says higher low. The macro says prove it. Thursday’s candle is the tiebreaker.

Price has bounced from the recent lows and is holding above the TnT Bullish line at 6,711. The 30-minute chart shows the Bullish TnT signal that triggered earlier in the week still intact.

The key levels are straightforward. Above Tuesday’s highs is the bull case – that prints a higher high on the short-term structure and changes the sequence. Below Wednesday’s lows is the bear case – that breaks the bounce and resumes the declining movements. Everything in between is noise, and there has been a lot of noise this week.

The range has been the story for weeks and the broken record observation still holds: not much new developing on the structural picture. With new information arriving in the form of the Hormuz mines and the IEA release that didn’t move the needle, the higher-low-versus-dead-cat question becomes the genuinely open one. Anyone who has the answer with certainty today is selling something and the bill arrives next month.

Current Status: Bullish Above 6,711.17 / watching Tuesday’s highs for bull case / Wednesday’s lows for bear case / Thursday candle is the read

RUT Analysis

Uncle Russell is sitting just above the Bullish line – cleaner price chart than SPX, same unresolved question.

The daily chart on RUT shows price holding above 2,490 with the Bullish TnT signal in place. The recovery from there has been orderly rather than explosive – which is consistent with a genuine higher low forming rather than a panicked short-covering rally.

With Hormuz still physically compromised and WTI above $90, Uncle Russell’s small-cap domestically-focused composition gives it a slightly different macro exposure than SPX – less direct energy-cost impact, more domestic demand sensitivity.

Current Status: Bullish Above 2,490.3 / PFZ 2,463.38 held / Target 2,600.74 / higher low structure intact so fa

Premium Popper | ORB20 – After Action Report

A scrappy session. Six trades. Six wins. The system didn’t notice the macro noise.

SPX ran four trades, all winners.

Trade 1 caught the 1st BO – classic setup

Trade 2 came off the 3rd BO – which meandered around before finally exiting

Trades 3 and 4 developed as VWAP setups through the session – I accidentally double dipped but it worked out nicely.

Four from four.

All opened in the live session(s) on Wednesday.

RUT kept it simpler. Trade 1 off the 1st BO – $13 at 61.5% ROC. Trade 2 off the 3rd BO – $15 at 64.3% ROC. Both covered cleanly. Both in the live session.

Six trades total. Six wins. No losses. The broader session was choppy, the macro noise loud, futures volatile pre-market. The poppers cared about none of it. The setup was there. The process ran. The results followed.

Current Status: 6 trades / 6 wins / 0 losses / all closed live sessions / independent of macro direction

Expert Insights:

The higher-low-versus-dead-cat question is the right question this morning. But Soros’s point is that being right about the direction is only half the equation. The more important variable is the structure of the position when the answer arrives.

A deleted government post moved WTI $13 in a single session. Traders with unlimited-risk directional positions in crude were at the mercy of a social media account. Traders with defined-risk spreads knew their maximum loss before the post was even deleted. This is precisely why the structure of the trade matters more than the directional call in an environment like this one.

The higher-low case has evidence: Fear and Greed at 13, price bouncing from visible lows, sentiment at an extreme that historically precedes covering rallies. The structural backdrop – Hormuz mined, 92K jobs lost, March CPI incoming – is not the typical environment for a sustained recovery. Both are true simultaneously. The practical application is what the AAR demonstrates every morning: 6 trades, 6 wins, regardless of whether the macro question is resolved. The day trade system does not need an answer to the higher-low debate. It needs a valid setup and a defined exit.

[Source: George Soros quote – widely attributed, public domain | IMF oil/inflation multiplier data – imf.org | CME FedWatch – cmegroup.com]

1 – The deleted Navy escort post is a new category of market risk that has no name yet. On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Wright posted that the Navy would escort tankers through Hormuz. WTI dropped from above $100 to $77. The post was deleted. WTI recovered above $90.

[Source: Reuters energy market coverage, 11 March 2026, public].

This is not normal price discovery. A market that moves $13 on a social media post – and then $13 back on its deletion – is pricing policy intent in real time, including the retraction of that intent. The volatility this creates is not reducible to technical analysis. It is information risk, and the appropriate response is defined-risk position structures rather than directional conviction with size.

2 – Goldman’s immediate rebuttal of the IEA release identifies the correct structural problem. The IEA released 400 million barrels – the largest emergency action in its history. Goldman’s response was that it cannot close the supply gap.

[Source: Goldman Sachs commodity research note, public, 11 March 2026].

The reason is precise: a reserve release addresses supply volume. It does not address supply route. If the Strait is physically mined and impassable, reserves sitting in the US, Europe and Japan cannot be delivered to the refineries that need them. The release was the right tool for a supply shortage. It is the wrong tool for a logistics blockade. Iran dropped mines, not production.

3 – Fear and Greed at 13 has a specific historical relationship with short-term price reversals. The index reached 8 earlier this week and has recovered marginally to 13.

[Source: CNN Business Fear and Greed Index, public, 12 March 2026].

Single-digit and low-teen readings have historically preceded short-term price recoveries in approximately 60-70% of instances over the past decade – not because sentiment causes price, but because extreme fear readings tend to coincide with maximum short positioning that creates mechanical covering rallies. This is consistent with the higher-low thesis. The structural macro backdrop – Hormuz mined, $200/barrel threat live, 92K jobs lost – is not the typical environment for that resolution to hold. Both things are true.

In Other News…

The IEA released 400 million barrels on Wednesday. The largest emergency reserve release in the history of emergency reserve releases. A moment of such institutional gravity, such unprecedented coordination, such monumental logistical effort that oil closed the session… above $90. Goldman Sachs, to their credit, explained the situation with admirable clarity: you cannot deliver oil through a mined strait with a press release. Iran apparently agreed and dropped more mines to illustrate the point.

Energy stocks are up 24.2% year-to-date while the S&P 500 has managed 0.5%. The same war that is disembowelling the broader index is the best thing that has happened to the energy sector since the last time someone threatened to close a major shipping lane. Chevron added 2.91% on Wednesday. Clean energy funds hit record highs simultaneously. The market correctly pricing both the crisis and its beneficiaries at the same time – it’s almost impressive.

Nvidia GTC arrives March 16-19 – the conference that should be the AI sector’s showcase moment of the quarter – landing in a week where the conversation is about defense spending and whether the Navy is actually escorting anyone through Hormuz or not. The timing is, to put it politely, suboptimal. The deleted tweet that moved oil $13 came from the Energy Secretary. The conference where Jensen Huang talks about AI chips arrives four days later. One of these things is currently more relevant to markets.

Dollar at 99.05. Gold holding $5,181 despite $3 billion in single-day GLD outflows on Wednesday – institutional selling into the geopolitical bid while retail holds on. Bitcoin at $70,535 with institutions buying the fear at Fear and Greed 13. The range of assets being simultaneously repriced by a 33-kilometre waterway is genuinely extraordinary.

Fun Fact:

The Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest point is just 33 kilometers wide – roughly the same distance as the English Channel between Dover and Calais. Through that 33-kilometer gap passes approximately 21 million barrels of oil per day, representing around 27% of all global maritime oil trade.

[Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration – World Oil Transit Chokepoints – eia.gov/international/analysis/special-topics/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints]

To put the comparison in context: the Dover Strait crossing takes about 90 minutes by ferry. The Strait of Hormuz takes considerably longer when the IRGC has placed mines across the shipping lanes.

Trade well,
T2 Markets

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