Today should be very interesting.  Will investors focus more on Facebook’s faceplant……or the nominal progress on trade issues?  How about the disappointing Durable Orders?  And, what about the ECB’s obfuscation?  Could be some interesting cross-currents — made even more interesting by the fact that ES/SPX reached our upside target yesterday. continued for members…

Too close to call on the equity front, though the effort to push through to new highs looks thus far as though it’ll be successful. RB and CL have pushed as high as they can if there’s going to be a reversal this week.

VIX is still loitering around its SMA10.  Not too difficult to dip below it and potentially the yellow channel bottom at 11.6 if things get a little hinky.All SPX and ES have to do today is hold 2838.66 and 2834.09 respectively.  If they can do that, and FB stabilizes above 182, and AMZN can stick its earnings, then we’re almost certainly looking at new all-time highs.

I wish I could say I’m certain.  But, ATHs depend on the algos continuing to get the proper cues — the USD, interest rates, USDJPY, oil and gas, and VIX all remaining in this range.  If one or more of those things falters, it could all go to hell and SPX/ES could be back at their 2.24s in a jiffy.

UPDATE: 11:40 AM

Looks like FB is on the road to recovery.UPDATE:  2:55 PM

Not much headway for FB… …while SPX and ES are both holding their .886s.Interesting that GOOGL is making a run for its 1.618.

CL and RB are now both at attractive turning points. The question came up regarding interest rates.  I think I wrote about this a few days ago, but it’s worth repeating.

Bottom line, I expect the 2Y will continue rising until the spread between it and the 10Y is negligible. The point of this is to create more headroom for the next time the Fed has to rescue stocks.

The 10Y can’t go much past 3%, so this means the 2Y will approach it.  Important caveat – it might have already bottomed.  I don’t think so, but it’s possible. It’s interesting that the recent tightening hasn’t affected stocks much at all — at least yet.

The general increase (of both) has, however, continued to help DXY and USDJPY. Again, the most likely scenario to me is that USDJPY and DXY will continue going sideways until the short-end rate hike is over.