WTI spent May 2020 through Feb 2022 in a fairly well-defined channel (below, in white) as it recovered from its pandemic lows. It broke out on Mar 1, however, topping 100 and taking only 5 sessions to reach our 130 target which wasn’t schedule to happen until December.Since then, it’s seen a series of fits … continue reading →
Remember how excited the bulls were about the reflation trade? Higher interest rates meant the economy was reopening at a good clip. What could be better than that? Things look a little different from the perspective of 3%+, don’t they? Nothing alarming here… Remember, it’s not the inversions that bite, but the spikes higher which … continue reading →
Headline PPI reached record highs in February, coming in at 10.0% YoY. Under the hood, prices for unfinished goods registered 14.6%, the highest since January 2001. Prices for processed goods jumped 23.3%. Prices increased across the board, with the largest gains in energy. Futures were flat going into the early morning VIX plunge, but gained … continue reading →
Equity markets rarely fail to rally into the end of the year. But, there have been several noteworthy Q4 exceptions over the years, each of them marked by VIX’s bounce off well-established trend lines. Note that SPX’s yellow channel has been rising at a compouned 12.2% per year since the 2009 bottom – historically a … continue reading →
Interesting piece in Reuters today on Japan’s vaccination efforts and the overwhelming level of infections in Osaka, Japan’s second largest city, only two months ahead of the Olympics. While many countries are making good progress with vaccinations, Japan – the 11th most populous country in the world – is lagging badly. It’s not the only … continue reading →
With various indices reaching or nearing important overhead resistance, today is shaping up as a moment of truth for a market which has delighted in head fakes.continued for members… … continue reading →
Members will recall that one critical component of our oil/gas decline scenario is USDJPY’s breakout from the falling channel from 2017 shown below. Guess what? The yen carry trade is a tried and true method of goading the algos into buying equities – even overpriced ones. It works especially well as a counterweight to falling … continue reading →
Futures remained slightly lower following lower than expected initial claims (709K vs 740K consensus) and CPI – which came in at 1.2% annual and 0.0% for October. Note that it took a plug number outlier +1.2% pop in electricity to keep CPI from going negative. One would think if the economy were really all that … continue reading →
Let’s talk about inflation. At 0.4%, both headline and core handily beat consensus of 0.3% and 0.2%. Why? This morning’s CPI release is a treasure trove of information regarding price action in the general economy. On an annual basis, energy tanked and food soared. MoM, food was still strong while energy and used cars soared … continue reading →
It’s been only two weeks since our last update on COMP in which we pointed out COMP might be running out of upside. In that time, the index popped up to an even more compelling reversal point. Due to its age, the rising white channel that dates back to 2009 is subject to a little … continue reading →