Market Chess
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Pop Quiz, Hotshot
We have a few big tests in progress on the indices here, with the small caps (IWM daily chart, first below) and the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ daily chart, second below) testing their 200 and 50-day moving averages, respectively, from the underside, meaning price had broken below those…
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Peaches and Cream Monday
Today marks thirty-nine years to the precise date (Monday, October 19th, 1987) of the infamous "Black Monday" crash. Unlike Black Tuesday, which occurred on October 29th, 1929, there are still quite a few folks alive who can give firsthand accounts of Black Monday. No such Black…
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Afternoon Update 10/16/26 {Video}
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Celebrating the Wrong Thing
As we noted yesterday, both here and with Members, Treasuries went the other way after both the hot CPI yesterday and then the red-hot PPI inflation readings this morning. Bulls have been celebrating what they view as an overdue rally in bonds, as rates finally come back down a…
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Recession Trade, Smoke 'em if You Got 'Em
As we noted with Members in last evening's full video recap, there was perhaps no greater sign of complacency from bulls not just about markets but the broad economy when it came to this morning's CPI report. Headed into the report there was a consensus brewing from equity bulls…
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A Dead Ringer
South Korea's KOSPI Composite Index has been having a rough couple of sessions, which reinforces the recent weakness we have seen in the semiconductors, overall, since the KOSPI is essentially highly levered index to AI (or "SI," if you like) these days. But beyond looking at…
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Arbitrage
Consistent with the zeitgeist of this market, last week's headlines speculating on a takeover of Chipotle by Starbucks saw traders embrace the "FOMO" (Fear of Missing Out) in lieu of possible risks such as, oh I don't know, perhaps the whole theory of the M&A between the two…
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Afternoon Update 10/09/26 {Video}
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Out of Tune
Despite some fairly hawkish Fed Minutes this afternoon it appears as though a solid 10-Year auction is sufficient to send rates back below 5.3% as I write this in the final hour. That said, rate-sensitive sectors like the REITs (IYR) and homebuilders (XHB) are not responding in…
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Film Noir Market
One of the central elements of the film noir genre is a fatalistic storyline. Fatalistic is defined as the belief or attitude that all events are predetermined, inevitable, and impossible for humans to change or avoid. Thus, when viewing the price action across markets these…
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MOVE, VIX, Get Out the Way
The Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate (MOVE) Index reflects the level of volatility in U.S. Treasury futures. In effect, the MOVE Index is considered the "VIX" of the bond market, reflecting implied volatility and regimes of higher volatility in general where the bond…
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Afternoon Update 10/02/26 {Video}
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Even the Groundhog is Tired of This Market
To say that this market has been stuck in a redundant feedback loop which would make Groundhog Day (1993) blush would be the understatement of the century at this point. In particular, each and every single day (and overnight) the tape is bombarded with headlines from Trump, the…
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You Cannot Fool All of the Markets, All of the Time
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” -Abraham Lincoln Within the hour we will finally have that explosive candlestick for rates on the 10-Year Note officially in the books, as…
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Golden Top Arches
While the rally in shares of Carnival Cruise Lines is popping today after earnings, that chart remains broken and the gap looks to be nothing more than a retest of the prior $25/$26 breakdown level. Instead, I maintain that the likes of Costco, Walmart, and McDonald's are far…
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The Writing on the Wall
Just because we know the daily rumor mill will keep heavily churning indefinitely does not make this type of market regime any less exhausting and tedious to trade on a daily basis. It certainly seems as though the White House does not feel it can afford to take one single…
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Afternoon Update 09/25/26 {Video}
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Make Me Beautiful, Natural Gas
Natural gas had quietly been on fire this week. In particular, given the focus elsewhere on rates, crude, diesel, and just about every other typical distraction in this cycle from Washington, AI, Iran, and the like, it is quite easy to see how even a ferocious move like this in…
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I Didn't Put Nothin' Up!
As one of our astute Members, Stu, noted several times of late, gasoline could easily be leading crude higher here, even with tons of focus from the White House on diesel all of a sudden. And that gasoline leadership sure seems to be the case today, with the UGA ETF (for rolling…
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Again
Despite a Fed rate hike last week, not to mention another one in play by the end of this calendar year, it is quite clear that we have a White House not only hell-bent on downplaying inflation but also outright flaming the fire to run it hotter than ever. As we have noted before…
