2466!! Jeepers! The market internals looked all hinky early-on, but have come around to support the climb. 6-minute TICK is still negative, but improving. TRIN started at a *very* bearish 1.75, but is bullishly down to 1.17 (and the direction, of course, is more important than absolute level, especially as the clock ticks) ES Futures show a continual pattern of more ask than bid (hedging to the upside). But I don't know as I care for this much climb, this fast. I still think 0.60%/day is a more stable number... with that (and barring new swans of *any* color a'suddenly swimming by), I'm going to opine that, the more we climb today, the more we take the wind out of tomorrow's sales. (Heh heh heh. "Did you see what I did there?") So: 2470 for Wednesday open. (I'll even go 2475. What the hey.)
In another thread I just posted 2470-75 in the next 2 days. The gap is at 2475 and we should at least test it... Great minds....
This would *not* be a great time to snug up the puts.... TRIN absolute says "Down!" and the TRIN direction says, "DOWN!" -- that we're flat with that? A very unstable market. Should BUYers step out, that big of a SELL volume would bring us down 'right smart'. How fast?? The 6-mute average TICK sez, "REALLYYYY flippin' fast!" Slow climbs like this are killer, cuz sellin' the top is foolish, and selling the bottom is suicide. Well, it's noon. Europe closed up a *reasonable* amount (about twice the flop of the SPX)... If we camp here, and remain flat overnight, then 2470-2475 for Wednesday still holds. But I don't like this one single bit. Very unstable. I'll be watching TRIN and TICK and volume closely, looking for some substance besides the short-timers and the short-cover-ers. FWIW, I'm sitting on a *small* batch of 2475s for Friday. If I had more confidence, I'd roll 'em up and then sell the bottom for the difference. The alternative is to roll 'em out. But even with this *stated* vol -- if you check your screens, topside SPX vol is a paltry 5%-6%. "Whattttt??? Screw dat!!" Uh-uhh. Not gonna play.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/quest-for-financial-freedom.310955/page-2#post-4499969 Made the same call on Friday. however this rally will extend beyond where we were before because the outlook for the interest rates has worsened and this has yet to be reflected on the NDX 100 https://www.investing.com/central-banks/fed-rate-monitor This is one of these occasions where I see no risk to going full leverage on it with a rather wide trailing stop just in case we actually do attack NK. A secondary trade for which I have a lot less confidence: Gold should go down to 1260-1270 range. I was also fairly confident in oil going down from 49 but didn't have any margin for it and was a bit more confident on the NDX. I believe that oil can not go beyond 50, the backwardation that was observed confirms my hypothesis: Get the long tail of oil beyond 50 and all the folks in west texas will secure their funding at 50 because as one texan put it, "at 25 we break even, at 50 we make greaaaat money" On the lower bound: Service cost inflation is real due to the overall increase in rig count. Anecdotal evidence suggests the whole model, in its present configuration, isn't viable anymore below 42-45. so for now i predict it will simply go sideways OR hit 42-45 before bouncing back when inventories are liquidated a little. Only a limitation in inventory capacity could crash it to 25.
"Phew!" 2466 at noon -- feeling a lot better about 2470 for Wednesday open, you might imagine. Modestly bullish/neutral TICK and TRIN spell stability for the rest of today. (Still, the 2075s ($5-wide) I was sitting on for Friday are now 2085s (still $5-wide) and, to make up the dollar difference, 2420 and 2495 for Aug25 ($5-wide). I still think the 2485s are in jeopardy; they may yet have a home in Aug31, because when we dropped to 2430s, I bought back a lot of inventory on top: should we rise like I think we could, those 2485s will go to Aug31 to reoccupy those slots.)
Okay, so: 2470 it is. The thing is, that call depended on a read of NKorea having pulled the market 'artificially' down, and the market recovering in a measured way to zero. Here we are at zero. With a Reversion-To-Mean paradigm, I think of the market not as a pure pendulum device, but more as a brick on a spring -- full of inertia, accelerations, and sometimes suspended in one spot, *waiting* for the slightest hair difference to trigger movement. If the market bricky pendulum is 'back to zero' right now? Whither next??? As an option seller, I'd hope for more vol than this.... but writing without some sweet movement is a gutsy business. GOOD LUCK, ALL. (This would be a good time to close this thread, FWIW......)