You are absolutely right: it’s not exactly an exciting pre-open. That’s OK! There’s still plenty we can do in this market. Over the past couple of weeks, the /ES has gently slipped its way higher, although it is definitely looking a skosh weary at these lifetime highs. There are only so many $1 trillion deals one can announce in a week, you know.
The /NQ is actually more piqued than the /ES, as it continues to create a little more daylight between the horizontal resistance and itself. Next week is a MONSTER earnings week, so that should provide much more clarity from a fundamentals perspective.
The most vulnerable of the big three stock indexes is the small caps, the /RTY, which as of this composition is down about four-tenths of a point. Like I said, not a barn burner of a morning.
Longer-term, volatility has sunk to what has been, for years now, pretty much the soil level for fear. Complacency is ubiquitous, and what’s happening around us right now is so confusing that I’m getting emails from folks that are just walking away from the entire enterprise, since this is utterly uncharted territory.
I will say that the overarching theme of “bullish precious/bearish stocks” continues to be my touchstone, and although there’s plenty of wiggling along the way, gold, silver, and palladium (the “Maxx pain” trade, as we call it) are all moving in generally the right direction.
