There’s just no other word for it. Today, for the bears, was absolutely brutal.
You see, over the weekend, I was thinking to myself how crucial it was that the market begin to weaken. That transpired beautifully on Monday. Tuesday was immaterial: nothing of note happened.
Today, however, blew a shotgun blast right through bearish hopes. In fact, the fun part of this bear market ceased abruptly on June 16th. Since then, it’s been a total hellscape. We seemed to be getting back into business in October, but with the October 13th CPI report, that was all over. It’s been a nightmare ever since.
Of course, all it took was a few words in Powell’s speech to add trillions to the market. I’m still processing the unrelenting melt-up – – and it was absolutely a melt-up – – – but here are a few thoughts about three key ETFs.
The SPY was a shameless tease. See that ascending supporting trendline. It was tagged PERFECTLY at today’s low. I’m talking to the pixel. And then, blammo, not only does it roar higher, it actually went THROUGH the Sept 12/13 price gap. At this point, the last hope for the bears is that descending trendline, anchored all the way back to the lifetime high. Jesus H. Christ, I can’t believe we’re at risk of snuffing out this bear market in its infancy.
The Dow Industrials blasted past its own trendline weeks ago. It has ascended SIX THOUSAND POINTS since last month. Based on…………….the prospect of a less-aggressive increase in interest rates. Sigh.
The truly horrifying thing is what’s happened with the NASDAQ, because the pattern is has hammered out is extremely similar to what happened in July. That is to say, it spent weeks dicking around, but there finally came a day when the market vaulted above its base, and it didn’t look back for over two weeks. So the prospect of a Santa Claus rally is more likely than ever.
I had been (past tense) fairly aggressively positioned, but I went into hair-on-fire mode during the run-up in prices, and I ended the day with 26% cash and, if I’m not mistaken, a few missing body parts. The VIX has been smashed back down to 20 again, and it’ll be interesting to see if it respects this as the bottom of the range or if we’re yet again in a teenaged VIX era.
Suffice it to say the day sucked massively for me, and in these two months, there have been three wretched days (I don’t even have to look them up – – October 13, November 10, and today) which have been apocalyptically bad. Oh, and look, the futures just opened again, and everything is green. How about that.
