The market seems to want to go up each day as it has relentlessly almost every trading session since April. But yesterday, it had a tiny setback after the FOMC announcement. Today the culprit was housing. The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales declined 2.7% in August. Every economist worth his salt said the number would rise.

Good news on the unemployment front did give the market an early boost this morning. Within an hour, though, bad news on the housing sales front wiped out the gains and moved the major indices into negative territory, where they have remained.

Here were today's unofficial closing numbers:

Dow 9,706.99 -41.56 (-0.43%)
S&P 500 1,050.78 -10.09 (-0.95%)
Nasdaq 2,107.61 -23.81 (-1.12%)

This post was written by Minyanville contributor James Kostohryz
I believe that the market is currently poised in a binary position.

Better than expected earnings and/or guidance by the major banks and/or other major companies this week could send the S&P 500 flying past its 200 day moving average triggering a wave of long purchases and short covering (note that short interest has been rising sharply in the past few days).

On the other hand, disappointment from any of the major financials such as Goldman Sachs(NYSE:GS), JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) or Citigroup(NYSE:C) and/or major companies reporting this week such as Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)or Google(NASDAQ:GOOG)could send the market reeling into a quick 10% correction.

Here is my baseline view of the week, subject to change at any moment.

As the three-day Easter weekend approaches, volume is declining as both traders and investors shy away from a market that is fraught with uncertainty.

Not only are the Q1 earnings in doubt, but longer-term economic analysis by the ChangeWave team indicates that we can expect to see a trading range of 700 to 900 on the S&P 500 for at least several months. And this is supported by my own technical analysis.

After a discussion of many of the risks peculiar to this economic cycle, the ChangeWave team appraises the big economic forces that "simply have to play out over time."

Wednesday's announcement that the Fed would buy into the U.S. Treasury bond market was no surprise to most Fed watchers. In fact, the Fed has been talking about it for weeks.

But the big surprise was the size of the buybacks and the impact on future inflation.

So, with a newly revived concern about inflation, and five days of gains out of seven under their belts, traders decided it was time to cash in some chips.

But, technically, there is much more to the market's reaction to Wednesday's Fed move.

While Ben Bernanke's announcement that the Fed was buying Treasuries and sucking up bad mortgages was the cosmetic reason for financials to soar, an equally compelling reason may have been the massive but little-noted short squeeze that the announcement, combined with large government purchases of stakes in these companies, engendered.