Futures are off very slightly on this, the last day of OPEX week.
It’s been a frustrating week for bulls and bears alike, as stocks have been carefully supported at 2985+. With any luck, the logjam is about to break.
continued for members…It will, of course, require that VIX finally breaks out. The tiny IH&S targets 15.03. But, that’s not important. The issue is whether it can break out at all or will keep dropping after backtesting the SMA5 200 again.
Even then, there’s a lot of ground to make up.
The complication for the downside case remains the 10/20 cross. Yesterday, the 10 closed at 2956.11 while the 20 closed at 2957.55. This suggests the possibility, at least, that stocks will sell off today rather than wait until Monday.
But, of course, it also presents the possibility that we’ll see the ramp job continue until the FOMC meeting.
Virtually everything is elevated in service of the prop job. So, it’s tough to know which will budge and allow stocks to slide. My hunch is that VIX will spike higher and CL/RB will sell off strongly.
UPDATE: 12:07 PM
Shocking, I know, but ES just bounced at the horizontal support. Now, it gets interesting!
UPDATE: 3:53 PM
Stocks are off about 6 points with 10 minutes left to go. Monday should be a different story.
