With the stock market daily range still at all time highs an interesting phenomenon is taking place-time compression. What used to take days to play out in the markets is now taking hours or less.

The S&P 500 Average True Range (ATR) is running 80% higher than it was during the previous volatility heights of 2000. And more amazingly, as a percentage of price, volatility (as measured by ATR) has been as high as 8.4% of price in the past week!! The highest it ever reached in 2000 was 3.0% of price, and that was only for a day or two.

This volatility has literally compressed time. If we look at the S&P hourly chart, we see AVERAGE moves that are as big as daily bars were just a few short weeks ago. These are truly historic times.

Last week we talked about the importance of keeping history in perspective as we looked back at 25 year long trading ranges. See this article on my blog at www.smarttradepro.wordpress.com

But with this time compression that is taking place, it makes sense to keep an eye on shorter time frames, even if you are a longer term trader. With that in mind, let's look at a 60 minute chart of the S&P 500. Chart located at www.smarttradepro.wordpress.com

For the upside, the area around 986 will be a key resistance/breakout area. An hourly close above this area should give the market all the reason it needs to take another look at the 1045 high from early last week.

The downside is a bit more ominous, as we see no real support until we get down to 865 and then 840.

The overriding theme on this chart for me is the range containment. Currently, the market prices have been contained for the past week by the huge move up from Friday, October 10th and Monday, October 13th and the almost as impressive from Tuesday, October 14th to early on Thursday, October 16th. This is giving us a multi-bar range compression that shows us a descending triangle. A break of the triangle's edges on a closing basis for an hourly bar should give us some additional near-term clues to market direction.