Californians may be among the last Americans to wake up in the morning, but they're the first to spot a trend. And the big trend in California today is recession.

After giving up nearly all of its gain in the final two hours of trade yesterday, the indices were left quite extended on the downside on the 15-minute time frame heading into Thursday morning.

Professional system trader Art Collins shares his daily biases in the index, bonds and currency futures markets for May 16.

The Fed thinks it has two mandates: to preserve the value of the U.S. dollar, and to maintain full employment.  Is that even possible?

Although Wednesday's premarket economic data was welcome early on, as the day progressed more and more skeptics stepped forward questioning the data.

Professional system trader Art Collins shares his daily biases in the index, bonds and currency futures markets for May 15.

The U.S. economy is still far from normal. When houses go down, so does the rest of the consumer economy.

Commentary by Federal Reserve officials has been focused on strong price pressures in the US economy. While FOMC Chairman Bernanke did note that the financial markets have yet to truly normalize, his recent speech on the Fed’s liquidity provisions suggests that this will continue to be the method of dealing with the credit crunch, rather than outright cuts to the target Fed Funds rate.

The slower upside on Tuesday afternoon as compared to Monday leaves the market still open for some upside into Wednesday morning.

Professional system trader Art Collins shares his daily biases in the index, bonds and currency futures markets for May 14.