Here is a tip. Before the number release: Observe last hour or last half-hour of Wednesday. The dominant trend starts to play out there. Read the price action from that time forward and ignore that week price levels, bolly bands and all that. 87.25 last hour high. See this has nothing to do with TA, follow the footprints.
Good points. The market had failed to break out of a corrective pattern, then closed weak on Wednesday. That set you up for trouble on Thursday. There is an old adage that surprises happen in the direction of the trend. The trend was sideways to down. Of course, there was disappointing earnings news Wednesday night and some China noise, as I recall. The overriding factor however is that the tone of the market was moderately downbeat, so it was not going to shrug off any negative news like it will do when tone is bullish.