Otis said:
I have a gut feeling that this is one of those days that starts down/flat, and then charges upward in the afternoon.
Here a little traders tip.I'm a volume trader. So if you are day-trading...especially a major index...and are trying to determine the short term future direction...well one way to do that is by ascertaining market strength via Up volume vs. Down volume.
Charting programs like esignal...have this ability in a ticker format...so that (for example) NYSE Up Vol Minus NYSE Down Vol gets charted as a bar like the price movement of a stock. A 5 minute chart gives a nice picture of how the day is "trending"...especially nice when you can overlay technical indicators...even simple ones like Moving Averages.
If you don't have a professional charting program...then you need to do a little work on you own.
You can begin by going here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/advances
A simple look and you can see (today) that Down Vol is significantly greater than Up Vol on all exchanges.
For your gut to hold true (the day screams higher)...look for this variance to narrow...with the Up Vol eventually overtaking the Dn Vol.
I may begin to post some traders tips like this on my website..as well as some tips on how to manage option trades in order to get cost basis down or even better owning the position for a net credit in a thought-through plan of attacking the position....that site has been dry for awhile now because there has been no reasonable entries for new plays either long or short.
Good luck.