Since 1897, this is the 4th-fastest decline into "correction" territory for the Dow from an all-time high. In Jan we had extreme market optimism readings world wide based on ETF longs - in Feb it swung to extreme pessimism. The herd is bipolar?
Ok to give it the run down - I`ve been watching these indices for sometime now and to my accredit evaluation of the Dow Jones 30 - S&P 500 - FTSE 100 indices all of the aforementioned have been arriving at An Overbought Value State for sometime now - I think that this was per- ending 2017 - Its because the trends are moving so slow that I think that people forget where the Trend will end - And due to the Market Participants have been at it for the past 9 years within the Uptrend Phase they tend to get forgetful - This Current Phase of Large Monthly Chart Spike Down Low appearing on 29th/01/2108 may just act as A Warning that in fact these Indices have arrived at the Monthly Chart Highs so closer Monitoring & Evaluation is needed here before Pulling the Plug from out of the socket as it were - So the Low Side should prove as on equal interest this will all depend on who is trading the Derivatives at present time and as to traders risk appetite. - As added Advise - I do not trade this type of Derivatives myself because I can simply see that the lengths across A Good Support Level ending At A Good Resistance Level is far to long regarding Human Consumption Or as to the needs of the Forex Retail Consumer to put it another way.
I think a structural change was made recently. Janet Yellen turned off a credit line, I think. Derivatives are restructuring and underlying value will prevail.
Rin Rising interest rates should provide some more competition for funds that would otherwise go into equities. In addtion, the retirement of baby boomers should result in more of their money being put into more consvervative investments. Furthermore, should we end up in a broad-based trade war. the market should fall hard because the global economy will be seriously affected as trade as a percentage of the global economy has increased by a large amount in recent years. However, although the market valuations are near historic highs, liquidity is the fuel for price rises. There is sufficient liquidity as implied by the yield curve to fuel further market advances. Also, The U.S. economy is still reasonably chugging along as measured by transportation volumes. Consumer sentiment was still strong the last time I checked. My plan for stock positions in my retirement account is to take the buy signals with a target of new all-time highs in the U.S. stock markets. Should the current trade friction become a full-blown trade war, the yield curve inverts, consumer sentiment collapses, or the market indexes convincingly take out their recent lows, I would then change my long bias into a fundamentally based short bias.