S & P 500 Futures to test support this morning

S & P 500 Futures are down 14 after reacting to Nato member Turkey shooting down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border.

As we all know, traders hate the unknown.  And as we've seen many times before, these geopolitical events cause an increase in market volatility as the story plays out and new information is deciphered and analyzed.

However, the good news is that we've also seen technical levels provide clarity during these times of unknown fundamentals.

Like a pilot uses his instruments to fly through the fog, use the charts this morning to trade these events.

3 important levels are bunched up and sit right below us:

2062 has been a huge level since Spring.
2061.47 (grey line) is the 9 dma.
2059 (yellow line) is the 200 dma.

If the market continues to sell off at the open over geopolitical fears, 2062 is a great place to get long for a trade back to the important 2079 level.

S & P 500 Futures...some perspective

The Federal Reserve's decision on a December rate hike, corporate earnings, high profile ipo's and geopolitical concerns have been grabbing the headlines and controlling the dialog, yet the market is still bouncing in between well defined support and resistance levels.

For example, even as the terrorists attacks in Paris were causing chaos and fear, the market behaved rationally and bounced right off its 50 day moving average (red line above).

It has since rallied into some resistance at the 2089 level and is currently settling into a battle here at the very important 2079 level.

Of all the factors that may affect the market, I expect year-end performance anxiety from institutional money managers to trump them all.

In other words, buyers are higher and sellers are lower, which should create a great environment for range traders.

Rather than getting overly bullish or bearish, I'm using the levels in the chart above as inflection points to trade against.