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
To say that stocks have diverged from a whole host of things ranging from earnings to Treasury bonds to crude oil to economic data is an understatement. This is not some new phenomenon … has been going on for a … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of August 9, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: Are we beginning to see a chink in central bankers’ armor? Major central banks responded to the financial crisis by aggressively deploying both … Continued
Back in 2013, by August 20th, non-commercials had built 116,317 contracts in net shorts in VIX futures. In the next 10 weeks (by October 29th), net shorts dropped to 39,673 (Chart 1). Intra-day, spot VIX jumped from 11.83 on August … Continued
Breakouts galore in U.S. equity indices! The S&P 500 large cap index broke out to a new all-time high on July 11th, and has since made several more highs. The breakout came after having gone sideways since essentially February 2015 … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of August 2, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: Mixed messages from two major central banks! On Friday last week, Haruhiko Kuroda, BoJ governor, decided not to live up to markets’ lofty … Continued
A crucial test probably lies ahead for the S&P 500 large cap index (Chart 1). The index, trapped in a sideways pattern since essentially February last year, broke out nearly a month ago – potentially a huge development, with the … Continued
July turned out to be an important month for the S&P 500 large cap index. More than a year after it peaked in May last year, the index reached a new high, rising 3.6 percent for the month. The July … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of July 26, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: The Fed stopped short of signaling a rate hike near term. That said, the statement also said “near-term risks to the economic outlook … Continued
In the August expiration, the amount of call open interest in VIX heavily outweighs that of puts. Put open interest, represented by the red bars in Chart 1, is decent in near-the-money or slightly-in-the-money strikes, but pale in comparison to … Continued