It’s easy enough to engineer a meltup in advance of a Fed meeting. We’ve seen it countless times. But, what about after a meeting, particularly one where an actual taper or rate hike is announced? The countdown has begun. Stay tuned.

continued for members…Other than Friday’s VIX-driven pop to new highs, not much has changed. SPX/ES’s SMA200s are moving into a range where a backtest would be more acceptable. Folling Friday’s glaring VIX breakdown, VIX is back to the rising white channel bottom today. It will be critical for bulls for it not to rejoin the channel but, instead, continue breaking down. Bears need it to break into the channel and then break through all those SMAs and ultimately, out of the falling white channel.CL is making a bid to recover from last week’s very minor losses, bouncing off its SMA20.While RB is backtesting the soon-to-be bearishly-aligned SMA10/20.With the current tension between OPEC+ and its customers, something has to give. A drop in oil prices would solve a lot of problems for central banks/governments around the world. Of course, it would probably require a breakout in USDJPY in order to keep stocks from crashing. The pair is well positioned if they want to play that card. Otherwise, it is very overdue for a backtest.

Meanwhile, the USD is strengthening, hinting at a EURUSD breakdown… …and DXY breakout.Gold and silver have reversed slightly off their backtests. GC, which dropped back through its SMA100 and SMA200, has yet to break down.

SI backed off its SMA100 and channel bottom, and is currently back below its SMA10 as well. Both could go either way, depending on what happens with the Fed on Wednesday. But, these are both still disappointing longer-term to those thinking they might have provided a good inflation hedge. On that score, they have failed miserably.

BTC is often touted as having done a much better job and, as such, has been the recipient of much of the flow that might otherwise have gone to gold and silver. This past month, it certainly performed better than both gold and silver. But, it also ran into overhead resistance – the top of the rising yellow channel.

Back in April it broke out of the channel for a short while, but its subsequent breakdown was severe.

It has since recovered after testing the yellow channel .236 line and 2.618 Fib at 30,108, pushing up past an internal TL connecting its Oct 2020 lows with turning points over the past six months. It’s backtesting this TL, but if it can’t hold it then we should see another test of the cloud.The RSI hints at a continuing downturn, with the lowest dotted black TL a good interim downside target and the lowest blue TL likely representing a breakdown below the cloud.

continuing…