The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of August 23, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: In the Greenspan era, traders did not have to deal with the kind of mixed messages they do today. Back then, the message … Continued
Short squeeze played a big role in the equity rally since the February lows this year. Charts 1 and 2 are proof. Since the February 11th bottom through the all-time high this Tuesday, the Nasdaq composite rallied just north of … Continued
There is something interesting going on in the land of put-to-call ratios. Of late, the CBOE put-to-call ratio has diverged from the ISEE index, all equity. In Chart 1, the latter is inverted, as it is a call-to-put ratio. First … Continued
On Tuesday last week, Bloomberg carried an article on slowdown in stock buybacks in the U.S. TrimTabs data show that in the first seven months this year, buybacks totaled $376.5 billion, down 21 percent from $478.4 billion in the corresponding … Continued
Three prominent FOMC members spoke in the past week, and all three adopted a hawkish tone. Might they be trying to ready the markets for a rate hike in the September 20-21 meeting? With the U.S. presidential election scheduled for … Continued
That the green line in Chart 1 is increasingly taking the form of a coiled spring is non-debatable. That the longer it stays compressed in oversold territory, the higher the odds of a spike higher is non-debatable. What is debatable … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of August 16, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: One more prominent central banker this week seemed to throw his hands up in the air. John Williams, San Francisco Fed president, in … Continued
Through June, foreigners continued to bail out of U.S. stocks. They sold $6.8 billion worth. This was the fifth consecutive month of net selling, during which cumulatively they reduced holdings by $45.5 billion. On a 12-month rolling total basis, April … Continued
Following up on Tuesday’s blog, here is some additional food of thought on XLY, the SPDR consumer discretionary ETF. Three sessions ago, it arguably broke out of a five-week congestion; the ETF rose to a new intra-day high of $82.38, … Continued
The two major U.S. presidential candidates share at least one common interest. Both talk about the need to increase infrastructure spending. Democrat Hillary Clinton has a five-year $275-billion program. Republican Donald Trump says he would spend at least twice as … Continued