pebblewriter

Tag: oil

  • The Big Picture: May 12, 2022

    SPX closed below important support yesterday, suggesting that the current leg down isn’t yet over. Indeed, things could get worse.continued for members… (more…)

  • Bitcoin’s Meltdown

    BTC reached our next downside target at 28,600 last night, then dropped as low as 25,401 before bouncing back to current levels.

    It’s not unusual for BTC to overshoot important support. And, this .618 Fib level is theoretically important support. But, it’s also important to remember that a bounce is sometimes just a backtest of newly formed resistance before another leg down.

    We’ve been bearish on BTC since 66,432 in October 2021. We were a little early, but maintained our posture ever since with with the exception of the Dec 2021 and Jan 2022 bounces – a stance which has produced exceptional gains.

    We’ll take a fresh look at BTC and whether it’s worth trying to catch this falling knife.

    continued for members… (more…)

  • A Swing and a Miss

    ES spent 11 hours hanging around our next downside target yesterday.  While the session had many characteristics of capitulation, the fact that SPX didn’t quite reach significant support (3956) suggests that the overnight ramp is a head fake.continued for members… (more…)

  • Nobody Saw it Coming

    The financial press usually starts to take things seriously about this point in a correction. The permabulls aren’t calling bottoms any more, while the bears are licking their chops. It never fails, someone on TV says something like “no one saw this coming.”

    It’s silly, of course. What they mean is that they didn’t see it coming. Plenty of others did. Some, like us, saw it months ago. This was our Jan 3, 2022 ES chart, illustrating the downside case.

    We reiterated the target, called the bounce over, and nailed down the timeline in late March.

    Now, as we finally approach ES 3997, it seems that more and more mainstream bulls and trend followers are getting bearish (better late than never.)The risk, of course, is that excessively bearish sentiment would stoke another bounce and postpone the 3997 tag. VIX has some thoughts about that.

    continued for members… (more…)

  • The Reflation Trade

    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 come after. Futures are off again this morning following a strong jobs report, but we’ve yet to punch through Monday’s lows.continued for members… (more…)

  • FOMC Day: May 4, 2022

    Today’s FOMC meeting is one of the most anticipated and consequential in years. It’s difficult to overstate its importance in terms of economic impact and, perhaps more importantly, Fed credibility.

    Yes, we care about whether the Fed hikes 50 or 75 basis points – though either is unlikely to put a dent in inflation. The bigger question is what the Fed does with its $9 trillion balance sheet.

    Futures are up modestly.

    continued for members… (more…)

  • A Fork in the Road

    Yankee great Yogi Berra famously advised that “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.” The S&P 500 is weighing such a decision this morning, having closed Friday at a critical level of technical support.  A rebound from here would buy the Fed a little more time for inflation and hawkishness to ebb. A failure to bounce implies at least another 8-10% downside.

    Which will it be? Fortunately for us, our chart patterns are sending a very unambiguous signal.

    continued for members… (more…)

  • The Market is (Still) Broken

    Futures came roaring back into the falling white channel yesterday, revealing what many know but few say out loud: the market is broken. When expectations of a 1% quarterly rise in GDP yield, instead, a 1.4% decline, stocks should decline. Plain and simple.

    The old “bad news is good news” argument doesn’t work any more because the Fed no longer has the ability (at least this coming meeting) to ease in response to a slowing economy. Perhaps they would have if they hadn’t squandered the opportunity to taper months ago, but that’s water under the bridge.

    Instead, we get this massive disconnect which is, at the end of the day, a means of ramping stocks in advance of the bad news we all know is coming via the Fed’s meeting next week: a 50+ bps rate hike. Beyond monetary policy, which is now a headwind instead of a tailwind, we see more and more indications of tough times ahead. As Bill Blain (a treasure) sums it up:

    The world is not what we think it should be. It is what it is…and that is getting less pretty.

    continued for members… (more…)

  • Update on Currencies: Apr 28, 2022

    The dollar index continues its tear, surpassing both its 2017 and 2020 highs this morning. This is consistent with our forecast [see: Apr 11 Update on Currencies] that the Fed would need help from a rising dollar to attack inflation without having to resort to sky-high interest rates that would further accelerate the growth of the country’s national debt.At 103.928, DXY hasn’t seen these levels since 2002 in the midst of the 54% dot com crash. While beneficial to the inflation outlook, the dollar’s strength hasn’t been very healthy for alternatives such as silver, which just reached our next downside target.continued for members… (more…)

  • Stocks’ Broken Record

    Yesterday marked the fourth time in the past two months that SPX tested the same important Fib level.  The failure to maintain a trend is becoming…well, a trend. Will SPX keep playing the same old song or is it finally time for this trend to be broken?

    continued for members…

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