The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of October 27, 2015. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: Once again, the Fed took a pass. Its decision this week not to raise interest rates was expected. What was not expected was … Continued
Are U.S. homebuilders getting too aggressive? Makes you wonder. This month, the National Association of Home Builders housing market index rose three points to 64, to a 10-year high. There have been times in the past when builder sentiment ran … Continued
Turns out short interest was indeed a tailwind for stocks in the two weeks ended October 15th. On SPY, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, short interest declined 10.6 percent, to 332.1 million (Chart 1). The ETF rallied 5.6 percent during … Continued
Up until Wednesday last week, the hypothetical trade involving a weekly short put on SPY, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, was going pretty well. Then came the 2.8-percent jump in the remaining two sessions, and the trade began to bleed. … Continued
In markets, rarely does everything move in sync. Some jig, some jag. Some lead, some lag. That is the nature of the beast. But there is something called divergence, which, if it is so stark it is hard to miss, … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of October 20, 2015. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: At the press conference following the ECB meeting on Thursday, when asked by a WSJ reporter as to why the bank is fighting … Continued
Back in early August, China engineered a fall in the yuan. Soon followed investor hand-wringing over whether or not it would be selling its Treasury holdings in order to stabilize the currency. The Chinese economy is slowing, and capital outflows … Continued
Since the August 24th low in U.S. stocks and the subsequent rally, some signs of risk-on are visible, but small-caps are substantially lagging large-caps. In Chart 1, a product of XLV (healthcare), XLU (utilities) and XLP (consumer staples) is divided … Continued
Stocks of major U.S. banks and brokers are behaving in a way that shorts are probably not very happy with. Should they treat this as a signal or noise? The top six have reported September-quarter results, and it is a … Continued
The S&P 500 index rallied 0.9 percent last week – its third consecutive up week. Off the September 29th intra-day low, it is now up 8.7 percent (Chart 1). That is in 14 sessions! This is too fast, and probably … Continued