With President Trump panicking about losing the November mid-term election to the Democrats because the Democratic congress is likely to impeach him, plus his inability to stop the Federal Reserve from raising interest rate the only options Trump has is to use the Exchange Stabilization Fund (funds for the PPT) to continue to push the stock market up in order to create an impression that all is well.
But without any new buyers because every one is long the stock market, rallies always seems to be choppy and short-lived. However, as long as all the major indices such as the Dow, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq remains above their respective key 50-day moving average there would not be many sellers of stocks as most major algos will remain in buy mode above the 50-dma.
On Thursday the PPT managed to cause NQ to open above prior day high, which triggered some short-covering spurts in he morning, but then without any other buyers, NQ simply traded sideways into the closing bell.
Key price level for NQ on Friday will be 7570, which is the 20-dma on the daily NQ chart, will be key support for Friday
-- As long as NQ remains above 7570 there would not be too many sellers. With so many traders still stuck in their short position from Thursday, any pullback down to 7570 will be used by the shorts to exit their long position thus providing strong support.
-- NQ would need to break below 7570 to generate addition selling to cause a quick decline.
