Another day, another central banker propping up the markets…

So, Dudley isn’t so sure that the recovery is exhibiting the strength necessary to allow the Fed to raise rates?  What a huge surprise — except to our regular readers (not so sure about the irregular ones…)

The Fed can’t afford a rate increase any more than they can a rebound in oil prices, a slump in the dollar, normalization of stock valuations, requiring banks to markU securities to market, etc.

CL ran out of room at the .886 as expected……though USDJPY was happy to take up the slack.  Unfortunately, it has also run into overhead resistance — at the yellow .618 at 120.11.Futures are maintaining yesterday’s CL-driven rally highs, but weren’t able to break through the TL  from October.  Together with USDJPY and CL topping out, not a great sign for bulls…One potential ray of hope comes from across the pond.

continued for members…

The EURUSD, which failed to push to a higher high yesterday, has found channel support and might have one more leg higher left in it.

I still like the idea of a backtest of the .618 at 1.1210.  But, I have to admit the time is growing short — if it’s going to happen within the confines of the falling red channel.

SPX downside targets remain the same.

Yesterday’s rally was quite bullish on the face of it, especially relative to the SMAs.  The 10, 20 and 50 were all within a penny or two of one another for most of the day.  But, the 10 has now dropped below the others, a short-term bearish sign.

And yesterday’s high tagged the white .236 Fib as well as the red channel .886 line — both moderately and short-term bearish.

UPDATE:  12:35 PM

The only thing more effective than a Fed president going full bull-tard is two Fed presidents going full bull-tard.  Kocherlakota joins in…

“That conversation (about raising rates) in and of itself is a tightening of policy,” Kocherlakota said. “I do worry about the ongoing conversation about tightening monetary policy being a drag on economic performance both in terms of growth and in terms of employment outcomes.”

“I continue to believe that it would be a mistake to raise the target range for the fed funds rate in 2015,” Kocherlakota told the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce. Because of still-low employment and excessively low inflation, he said, the Fed should “start late and raise (rates) more slowly than we did in 2004 to 2006,” the last time the Fed boosted rates.

CL breaks out to new highs:

USDJPY breaks above Mar 31 highs:

As does SPX: