November 3, 2009 (FinancialWire) — Dr. Joe Duarte (http://www.joe-duarte.com) recently noted: The S&P SPDR ETF (NYSE: SPY) has taken it on the chin lately. And Monday’s action was no improvement despite the bounce.

Duarte added: Our trading plan calls for daily chart watching, with special attention to key support and resistance levels such as the 20 and 50-day moving averages for important indexes and ETFs as well as individual stocks.

Last week, SPY fell below its 50-day moving average twice. Once on Wednesday, a break from which it rebounded on Thursday, and again on Friday, after Thursday’s bounce, to the 20-day moving average, failed.

On Monday, the bulls were trying to move the major indexes back above the 50-day moving average. And they failed. And tomorrow things may fall apart again, or not.

The point is that no one really knows what’s going to happen today, or tomorrow. And that means that it’s best to be on the sidelines, unless you are a very nimble short term trader, which is not the focus of our service.

We’re looking for signs that an advance or a decline could be in place for weeks to months. That’s why we use the 20 and 50-day moving averages as guidelines for the short and intermediate term trend.

For now, only one thing is clear. This market is going to be volatile. And volatility means that a potential change in the trend is possible. The trend, up to now, has been up. Now, that is in question.

If you’ve followed our advice, your levels of cash have risen over the last few weeks, and you have very few open positions.

That’s a good place to be right now. If things change, we will adjust accordingly. There is no reason to be impatient. You aren’t missing anything right now.

Duarte’s conclusion: That’s why we have a trading plan. That’s why we follow it, so that at times like these we are protected from the day to day nonsense of hedge funds trying to make a buck on a few ticks.

Make sense of today’s nonsense. Get Doctor Joe Duarte’s Market I.Q., at:

http://www.joe-duarte.com/free/order_choices.asp and subscribe to www.joe-duarte.com, for its daily energy review and stock picks.

A book for this market - The All NEW Market Timing For Dummies. at: http://www.tinyurl.com/market-timing .

Duarte partners with the Investors Resource Center at Investrend Information (http://www.investrendinformation.com).

Duarte’s IntelligentForecasts.com (http://www.intelligentforecasts.com) provides free news coverage and analysis, and his daily articles and news summaries offer recommendations and analysis for ETFs, and individual stocks in the technology, health and biotechnology, and energy sectors. Duarte has combined expertise in health care, energy, and the effects of politics and global intelligence on the financial markets offer a unique blend of insight and information to thousands of active investors and political and intelligence aficionados around the world on a daily basis.

He is the author of: Futures And Options For Dummies, Successful Energy Sector Investing, Successful Biotech Investing and co-author of After-Hours Trading Made Easy. In early 2001, in Successful Energy Sector Investing, he correctly predicted that Venezuela’s political problems could lead to an energy crisis in the United States. He has also appeared as a weekly guest on Market Mavens Radio and has logged appearances on KNX radio in Los Angeles, Financial Sense.com radio, and Wall Street Radio.

One of CNBC’s original Market Mavens, Dr. Duarte has been writing about the financial markets since 1990. His articles and commentary have been featured on CBS Marketwatch, Barron’s, Smart Money, Medical Economics, and in Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazines. In 2003, Doctor Duarte received second place, in the professional section, of the Medical Economics Investment Challenge with a 12-month return of 42%.

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