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Just about the only sector I've been touting as bullishly-oriented has been energy, and I'm pleased to see this is panning out. A lot of battered stocks I've mentioned (KEG, SM, etc.) have been rallying, and USO is up over 3% as I'm typing this.
My hunch is that nailing the 50% retracement (circled below) is almost a given, but don't be surprised to see selling at that point.
A shortish post today as I'm still feeling a bit drained from returning yesterday from holiday and have a headache today. Looking at the SPX daily chart the current move up from support at the 50 DMA is close to reaching the upper bollinger band in the 1383 area. If the current move peaks like the last two then that would give a likely upside target in the 1385-90 area:
Looking at the 60min chart we have a solid uptrend with higher lows and highs, though this still looks like a corrective rally rather than an impulsive move towards new highs. The rising wedge that was looking very promising a couple of weeks ago has faded and there's no current pattern worth mentioning other than a possible double-top here, currently at the wild speculation stage. People have been talking about a possible cup and handle formed from the lows last month. I see it but the quality looks poor, so I'm disregarding it:
On the 15min chart I have a nice looking rising channel from the last low. I have channel support in the 1357-60 area today but I'm really looking for another push up to establish negative RSI divergence and set up the next short term high, ideally in the 1385-90 area as I mentioned looking at the daily:
I've been looking at bonds carefully this morning. The possible double-top on TLT and ZB that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago has set up, and while the overall picture on bonds looks bullish that's worth bearing in mind as a possibility. The signal for this playing out would be a conviction break below very firm support at 124 on TLT. Looking though at my 30 year declining channel on 30yr bond yields (TYX), you can see that TYX is still testing support at the 2008/9 lows, with the obvious target on a break below at channel support in the 1.7-8 area. That seems the more likely outcome here:
Would that be bearish for equities? Somewhat I think, though it's worth noting that TYX reached the last peak in early 2011 while SPX was trading in the 1300-1350 range. Since that time long term bond yields have almost halved while equities have slightly increased. Short term on SPX the current move looks to be topping out and though I'm looking for a bit more upside before a substantial retracement short term longs are starting to look risky here.
More tin foil on a subject I apparently just can't get enough of…
The FOMC announced that Operation Twist would continue through year end. This is where the Fed tries to re-inflate the housing bubble (and related areas) by buying long term T bonds to artificially hold down long term interest rates while sopping up any inflationary implications to the money supply by selling short term T bonds. Throw in a side of ZIRP, and you've got a lot of free money flying around out there with very subdued inflation effects.
Gold is in an orderly corrective consolidation. Silver has been hanging around at support and is sponsored by a bullish CoT structure. Commodities, even backing out the wildcards in agriculture, are in nice short-term bottoming patterns (copper is rounding upward and crude oil is breaking up from a small Inverted H&S with a target around 98) and just waiting for the Fed to lose control of the nice macro painting it has been working on since Op/Twist #1, back in September of 2011.
