Regardless of what it was - we still ended the week down - 8,79 % and approximately down 20 % from the top on the S&P 500. Big picture - this may have been just a retrace. The entire situation still seems entirely unresolved and uncertain to me, so I don't see why we can't drop a lot further from here.
I don't belief we will drop a lot further than the low of Thursday, which we will probably revisit as the effect of the coming recession takes hold between now and the end of the April earning season. The reason I say that is because the low we just visited on Thursday was a sustainable low based on 3% compounded economic growth from the devils bottom of 666 in March 2009. This may, from a technical viewpoint, be considered a reference point at which all excesses in valuation have been wrung out of the equities market. Consequently, I feel fairly safe in saying that long term investors who bought near those Thursday lows on Friday morning can sit tight and confidently ride out the recession. Even if we drop out of the longer term S&P Channel for a while during the upcoming recession, we should quickly return to the S&P Channel once the number of new virus case reported begins to drop. We are now seeing the new cases rising in number, but within 18 months or less we should see the number of new cases dropping. Of course we are dependent on competent government handling of this pandemic. At the moment, we are missing leadership at the top because so many agency heads have been appointed on grounds other than competency. That will be changing soon.
I went looking through the past 20 years, many market dead cat bounces were on Fridays, most bottom rallys began on Mondays through to Wednesdays.