Leading Indicators Update

Well the second of the 2 weekend wild cards has failed, that being Greece (1) which has some ridiculous rumor that Syriza will ask for a bailout extension and (2) the Ukraine cease-fire (part 2), which looked to have failed since the day it was announced, in to the cease-fire, during the cease-fire and now the deadline for Kiev to remove heavy artillery/weapons has come and gone with no movement as they are using the ongoing attacks by Pro-Russian forces as their reasoning , bottom line is neither side has abided by a truce that it seems was never going to work (Minsk summit). The situation is now escalating as fighting is getting heavier.

As for Leading Indicators, there are some interesting, sharp moves. I mentioned in the last update some SPY puts here may be an interesting though, not so much because I think the SPY looks the worst, but the Q's are at break even and the IWM looks like it's going to fade faster than the SPY.

The SPX:RUT Ratio , although on a percentage terms basis are not far off (SPY +0.15% and IWM +0.12% today with QQQ now in the red on the day), is showing a pretty strong non-confirmation signal.

 SPX:RUT Ratio (red) vs SPX (green) and no confirmation.

Then at the ramp which is largely JPY fueled surprisingly considering the rumor was a Euro rumor , Pro sentiment sees a sharp decline as the SPX is ramping, I had to check to make sure I didn't have the chart pricing inverted.

(here's EUR futures / 6e)...

Which barely moved on the rumor...

 The VIX is unusually strong, remember it was at CFTC record spec net long levels going in to last week, so hammering the VIX to lift the market was sort of like a short squeeze, just in reverse, but since the VIX is outperforming the SPX by a wide margin (SPX prices in green are inverted to see the normal correlation).

Here's the VIX v SPX today, you can see the sudden strong jump in relative performance.

VIX Futures are showing intraday positives as well.

As are VIX short term futures (VXX)

And UVXY, which are already in good overall position on a longer basis...

Here's the accumulation and distribution at the market's 1/29 through 2/2 base and the leading positive divegrence in UVXY (2x long Short term VIX futures) now...

Here's USD/JPY with a negative divegrence like EUR/USD earlier today...

 EUR/USD, again barely moved since the rumor because this is largely JPY driven.

If you invert JPY or rather FXY (ETF) in orange vs the SPY in green, this is what you get...

FXY/Yen vs SPX.

Strange that a Euro rumor would produce a JPY fueled spike.

In any case, some strange activities while NYSE TICK falls out of a tree...

NYSE TICK intraday.

This is why I thought a SPY POut, given the small gain and need to leverage it, might be worth a look.