That's still positive, but as you can see, another bad day or two could quickly pull the 20-day SMA (which reacts fairly quickly) below the 50-day SMA, which would make the configuration 50-day > 20-day > Index, which is upside down from what you want. That would lop another 1.5 points off the Timing Outlook.
This is S&P's own summary of its press release today. I'm sure discussion of this will be all over the news tonight and that the status of U.S. budget and debt-ceiling negotiations will be at the top of a lot of agendas for the next few weeks and months.
•We have affirmed our 'AAA/A-1+' sovereign credit ratings on the United States of America.
•The economy of the U.S. is flexible and highly diversified, the country's effective monetary policies have supported output growth while containing inflationary pressures, and a consistent global preference for the U.S. dollar over all other currencies gives the country unique external liquidity.
•Because the U.S. has, relative to its 'AAA' peers, what we consider to be very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness and the path to addressing these is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable.
•We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policymakers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium- and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013; if an agreement is not reached and meaningful
implementation is not begun by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer 'AAA' sovereigns.
