The folks running the “market” apparently don’t care how obvious they’re being — tossing a 28% VIX smackdown into the mix to make sure that yesterday’s preposterous ramp job can hold for one more session.

What’s their game?

continued for members…The well-formed falling white channel got busted yesterday and ES close above its SMA10.

So far, however, SPX has not topped its SMA10 (4226.90ish) – though the bearish 10/20 cross was, at the very least, delayed by a day.

The one consistency in this market lately is the tendency to ramp stocks as high as possible or keep them elevated for as long as possible before an event which could cause a downturn.  I believe that’s what’s happening now.

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My apologies for the delays in posting this morning. My teenaged daughter flew to California to visit the college she’ll be attending this Fall and ran into serious problems with JetBlue. Flight was cancelled at the last second after a hour-long delay, requiring a hotel for the night. They were told to be back at the airport at 7am for a 9am flight. But, during the night, the departure time was changed to 7:45am. Scrambled to the airport to check her bag only to find no one there to check bags less than an hour before the scheduled departure. Trying to call JetBlue was pointless – there was a 4-hour hold for someone at customer service. And, the folks you can chat with (after a 20 minute delay) had no more info than the faulty info that was on the website. I sense that this sort of thing is happening with all airlines, not just Jet Blue.

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Anyway, on with today’s charts…

While the ramp job originally fed off VIX’s smackdown, the other factors are all joining in.  USDJPY and CL are making higher highs and threatening a breakout.

Given that neither ES nor SPX reversed at any kind of channel or SMA support, and NKD/DJI are both still in limbo, I continue to believe this is a delaying tactic.

Powell will testify before Congress at 2pm – and that’s usually important enough to prop up stocks ahead of time. But, as we mentioned yesterday, there are some very important economic data coming out this week. The most interesting and potential impactful, IMO, are oil inventories (will the Fed leave it alone, or will they put a stop to the inflation run?), Durable Goods, GDP, and PCE prices.

Today’s other charts…

Interesting goings on this morning with Bitcoin, which officially backtested its blue 1.618. It still has plenty of overhead resistance. We could see a nice bounce here, but tight stops are warranted given the cloud picture.

I’ll post more later this afternoon.