Well, it’s time to face facts: the week is nearly over, and the market has gone positively nowhere. Below we see the small caps over a full five-day period, grinding away and essentially winding up precisely where it was on Monday, in spite of plenty of news in the meantime.
On a smaller timeframe, the /NQ pulled the same stunt ever since yesterday’s close, moving inside a ridiculously tight range. The above and below charts look similar since they’re both so danged dull.
At least with so many short positions I’m virtually guaranteed one or two good movers each day. However, now that earnings season is done, the trade wars appear to be behind us (multiple 90-day extensions notwithstanding), and with precious little economic news, there simply hasn’t been anything to nudge the market this way or that.
Because of this, fear has once again completely left the building, with our brief foray into the lower 20s now degraded on the VIX back to the pathetic mid-teens.
Interestingly, a virtually identical chart over the week is a completely different market: crude oil. I suppose oil represents a kind of “fear” of its own, so it makes a certain amount of sense that these two would be so tightly correlated, even though one represents the volatility of equities whereas the other represents the price of a cartel-controlled global commodity.
On a much longer timescale, crude oil still seems precariously perched to my eyes! This, I believe, speaks well to the economic peril ahead.
Since I took profits on ELF yesterday (which was the one source of excitement), I’m at 29 positions presently but will surely find another to round things back up. Good luck on this final day of the trading week!
