Monday, April 6, 2015

Daily Wrap

Last week's call on the market was pretty spot on, but as you probably remember it was tough finding much in the way of decent signals and this tends to happen when you really shouldn't be torturing charts looking for a signal for a specific reason, day to day volatility was dying down inside a roughly formed triangle making it very difficult for short term traders to make money, such as this...
As right angle and symmetrical triangles closed in on their apex, trading ranges narrowed, until late last week when the lack of signals started making sense as posted in the near term forecast using AAPL as a proxy after I had gone through my watchlist and noticed a repeating theme of pinching volatility, IMPORTANT: AAPL Set-up & Market Movement'

From the linked post above...

"What is a triangle when it comes to volatility? It's like a Bollinger Band squeeze in which the ATR might be getting more volatile on an individual day, but the range in the market is squeezing like a Bollinger band pinch, which is THE PROMISE OF A HIGHLY DIRECTIONAL INCREASE IN VOLATILITY. "

Today's move was darn near exactly what we were looking for in the near term forecast. If you read the entire post and the Daily Wrap from Thursday, you may remember my leaning toward the whisper number with regard to Payrolls on Friday morning being correct and leaked. One of the stranger events Thursday was the selling of VIX protection rather than the buying of it as we were going in to an uncertain 3-day weekend with not only a possible Greek default looming, but the Payrolls data when the market was closed Friday, it made no sense that protection was not bid, but rather sold.

From the Daily Wrap

"STRANGELY CONSIDERING TOMORROW MORNING'S 8:30 A.M. NON-FARM PAYROLLS DATA (the most important payroll data of the month and closely watched by the F_E_D as discussed earlier today), VIX short term futures underperformed the SPX... I don't know if the market knows something,  remember the whisper number is about 100,000 shy of consensus (mid 100k print) which would likely be taken as bullish by the market as it would tell the market (true or not) that the probability of a June F_E_D rate hike diminished."

I think you get a pretty clear picture and I think it pretty clearly looks at the Jobs "Whisper number" floating around all last week as some kind of leak. As I said earlier, I believe this is more about the $USD than anything else and whether we get some crazy F_E_D comments that are meant to talk the $USD down, the near term reaction to the horrible Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday most likely didn't need anyone to point out the obvious  market perception... that the big miss in payrolls lowered the perception for a June Rate Hike among market participants, note I did not say among the F_E_D / F_O_M_C.

HOWEVER, whether needed or not, our prediction that some F_E_D mouthpiece would be out right after a dismal jobs number , and this was forecast BEFORE the jobs number came out, it seems I was wrong, IT WASN'T BULLARD (but maybe they're saving him for the truly ridiculous stuff), it was straight from the NY F_E_D's president, Bill Dudley.

Fed watching recent U.S. weakness; rate-hike timing unclear: Dudley

"The timing of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, which would be its first in nearly a decade, is unclear and for now policymakers must watch that the U.S. economy's surprising recent weakness does not signal a more substantial slowdown, a top Fed official said on Monday."

This article/statement from Dudley seems rather reasonable, it's not the QE4 trial balloon that some expected nor the overtly dovish comment I expected to talk the $USD down without actually having to do anything, ala Draghi who has done it so much he's lost all credibility. However even as a softer, less that expected dovish tone was struck, it seems it was already pretty clear to the market or market's perception that this would be a reason to throw rate hike timing i to question, thus I doubt a strong statement was needed right off the bat, although a statement from one of Yellen's closest allies in the F_O_M_C was forthcoming rather quickly on the first trading day after the NFP.

I suspect they may pull out Bullard or someone else with some wackier statements if this doesn't knock the $USD down a bit, which so far it hasn't made much of an impact, thus the need for the gentle reminder that timing is in the mix whether it truly is or not.


Note the $USD's 3C 1 min intraday divegrence after hours after running up today and after some very whacky FX trade including a last hour EUR/USD flash crash in the most liquid FX pair out there...
$USDX looks like it's going to see some overnight weakness as the post cash market negative divegrence builds in. Note, I think some of the whackier events like the nearly right on whisper number that actually printed at half consensus and any strange, overly dovish comments to come are all about the $USD as the F_E_D will have a hard time raising rates so long as the $USD is strong.

Despite this intraday 1 min negative divegrence, I suspect the $USD is going to see a near term bounce, approximately on the same timeframe as the overall broader market as the 15 min chart had already reflected and continues to and the $USD has already responded to (the positive 15 min divegrence in $USDX).

 DX 15 min positive which is about the same timeframes shown last Thursday for a market / Index future bounce (7-15 min, same as the market averages at 15 min)...

The I suspect lower prices in the $USD.
 Daily $USD chart with the first serious negative divegrence since it has made its strong run higher.

A closer look at the same daily $USDX chart from above shows a similar "triangle" like price pattern, in line with the market.

Wonder why the market and $USD have taken a ride up higher together despite the $USD legacy arbitrage correlation and why a break in the $USD will have severe consequences for the broad market? HINT: I have long maintained my belief that the Yen would rally as the market breaks to a primary bear market and the charts seem to agree...
Yen daily 3C chart not only showing a positive divegrence, but a trend change from down in price to lateral like a stage 1 base.

Why?

$9 TRILLION $USD'S IN $USD-BASED CARRY TRADE THAT HAVE TO BE UNWOUND! 

Picking up where we left off Thursday...

The Futures market (Index Futures) were open for 45 minutes after payrolls came out Friday and the initial reaction was not good in futures...
Interestingly today's cash market saw that bad data as well as additional bad data this morning as being good. This was obviously the market's perception of the bad Jobs number delaying an expected June Rate Hike. The more you look at this entire event over the past week, the more it stinks; with a wild whisper number seeing the actual print coming in even lower and no protection bid Friday, but rather sold. I think we can safely assume there was a leak of the Jobs data from Friday morning as we had suspected earlier in the week and certainly by Thursday.

In addition, as of our analysis Thursday we had 15 min positive divergences in the averages (although short in duration) as well as 7-15 min positives in Index futures. From there and after looking at a broad watchlist of assets and seeing similar patterns, it wasn't hard to come up with a working theory/forecast,  IMPORTANT: AAPL Set-up & Market Movement which maybe isn't exactly as suspected, but it was darn close enough to the forecast for this week based on bad Jobs data Friday morning, something Wall St. apparently wanted us to know, so be careful as they don't let on anything they don't want you to know and they are not there to make YOU money!

As also noted in the Daily Wrap Thursday, we did have some Dominant P/V relationships that would normally indicate a near term overbought condition was brewing, but as I specifically said, "Normally I would call this a 1-day overbought condition, but because of the small daily gain, it doesn't feel that way"

As long as you understand the basic premise of our near term forecast as laid out in IMPORTANT: AAPL Set-up & Market Movement, then I don't think, "What already happened" is of much interest beyond what looks like clear inside information that made its way from Wall St. to main street last week.

Signals (3C and Leading Indicators) which were weak most of last week, especially around Tuesday/Wednesday sure picked up today as I had also suspected in the Daily Wrap. These periods of "Blah" signals don't last long, but looking back at the market action, I'm glad they were doing their job and not telling us anything beyond what we needed to know for the near term forecast as most positions that many of you are considering would have been horrible entries or at least ill-timed unless you wanted to go long a trade which some people may have, it certainly isn't my cup of tea right now all things considered (lack of strong signals last week for a long TRADE).

Moving forward, if you didn't get long Thursday for what I'd consider a trade that requires you be very nimble and probably will have a lot more risk than reward, then patience and letting the trade come to you is still as it has been during this triangle area, the best approach in my view. I don't see a great reason to introduce unnecessary risk at this point with what looks like fantastic openings now starting set ups. This was the very trend I noted Thursday as I went through many stocks in my watchlist and what was the final piece in putting together the IMPORTANT: AAPL Set-up & Market Movement post/forecast.

There were still a lot of strange events today beyond the Payrolls coming in less than half of consensus (Friday morning) with protection being sold rather than bid Thursday. There was a flash crash in the most liquid FX pair, EUR/USD toward the last hour of trade today...
 EUR/USD, the most liquid FX pair in the world sees a flash crash the last hour of the day, nearly bringing it back down to the levels seen just after Payrolls Friday.

A bit odd to see this pair acting like a low liquidity asset.

However by the same token, USD/JPY nearly regained all of the post NFP losses from the Friday morning session and since the start of the new week's trade Sunday.
USD/JPY round-tripping.

This was not a correlation to ES today, although it made a similar roundtrip from bad news is bad news on Friday with no one interested in protection Thursday to bad news and even more bad news is good news today with no reason to have bought protection Thursday,  unless you maybe knew what the print was going to be and as I said Thursday, that the market would likely take it well as the perception is that it increases the probability of the F_O_M_C putting off a June Rate Hike. *Please note my use of the word, "Perception", it is important as it is what moves the market, but it's not necessarily reality. I think we got a strange dose of that today with the Philly F_E_D all but saying the BLS employment data is such garbage that they aren't even going to post it on their website, although there may have been ulterior motives if the rest of the market thinks like most of us and suspect the NFP was leaked in advance.

Come on! 245k gain was consensus, the Whisper number was around 150k and the print was some 25,000 less than the Whisper number and half consensus!!!!

Sector performance was pretty good all around today, 9 of 9 S&P sectors closed green with Energy leading at +1.80% and Health Care lagging at +.15%. Of the 238 Morningstar Groups, a strong 205 of 238 closed green.

Thursday it was very obvious that internals were not showing any strong 1-day bias, they weren't oversold or overbought. With today's sector performance, I would say that the daily candlesticks on the averages above showing a bullish engulfing confirmation candle are right on and while sector performance could be interpreted as being a bit on the overbought side near term, you can't look at it in a vacuum.

When adding in the Dominant Price/Volume Relationship for the component stocks of each of the major averages, they all (except the Russell 2000 AGAIN!) show the same Dominant relationship. There were 16 Dow stocks, 58 NDX100 and 233 SPX500 stocks all Dominant in the Close Up / Volume Up relationship, this is dominant as there are 4 possible relationships and it also is the most bullish (near term) of the 4 relationships, so the daily candlesticks' engulfing (bullish) close today makes sense.

Sometimes we do get an ironic pullback the next day off this relationship, but all in all it looks like we are early in the move anticipated in the forecast post linked above from last week. This does not change the fact that the 3C charts intraday started with negative signals almost immediately and kept it up all day.

The poorest performer (surprise, surprise) on the day among the averages was transports...
The major averages intraday with Transports in salmon.

Bio-Techs were also a bit of a laggard today with XBI coming in at -.30% on the day. Gold was up on the day, but that seems to be because of the Goldman Sachs research note conducted on the F_E_D's own FRB/US Reality Simulator in which they not only argued for lower rates for longer, but that it's hard to be "Reasonably confident" in the inflation outlook, which is one of the F_E_d's ambiguity statements in which they'll hike before inflation moves toward their long run 2% target as long as they are "Reasonably confident" that it will.

As such, inflation sensitive Gold popped likely on the Goldman note regarding inflation. Significant divergences in gold suggesting a swing lower are still alive and well.

Among our Leading Indicators,  one of the things I was going to be looking for this week on a breakout from the triangles (which I believe and gave solid evidence to my opinion, that they'll be head fake/false or failed breakouts) was deteriorating Leading Indicators.

My very first Leading Indicator on my screen, the SPX:RUT Ratio which started showing a tiny bit of weakness late Thursday, was nearly inverted from the SPX today, showing that the anticipated Leading Indicator decline and signals seems to be taking place early on just like the 3C distribution charts intraday that saw some make it as far as 10-min negatives in a single day.

Interestingly this indicator has been leading positive recently in to the averages' apex of their triangles, today however it looks like I inverted one of the charts as there was non-confirmation of the market's move today, which would suggest to me that we probably have a few days left in this move as today was a bullish reversal confirmation as well as a volatility breakout as expected, in fact the biggest open to close range since Yellen back in December-nearly 5 months! If Leading Indicators like this keep moving as I had anticipated in Thursday's post on a directional breakout and increased upside volatility out of the triangles (as the apexes were mature), then we might have something similar to...

 SPY triangle as of Thursday's close with expected increase in upside volatility...Remember one of the most important things we have been looking for to indicate a larger stage 4 decline is a rise in volatility,  thus the triangles were a very important discovery and forecast.

Today's SPY close with the confirmation engulfing candle and forgive my poor drawing of additional candles, but another day or so up, which gives us the set up we have been waiting for as well as a chance for leading indicators to give strong signals. I essentially posted another green day, a yellow day representing something like a star or Doji (loss of momentum) and a bearish confirmation/engulfing candle. This is not a specific forecast, but a rough example of near term expectations and what "should" happen in Leading Indicators as is already happening in the SPX:RUT ratio with non-confirmation and bad today (as well as 3C negative divergences showing distribution so early in to the move which is why I drew a shorter swing).

Additional Leading Indicators...
  While HYG is severely dislocated on a primary trend basis and in a bear market calling for significant catch down in the SPX's primary trend, near term it is used as one of the first "go-to" ramping levers and was nearly in perfect correlation with the SPX today. When this turns (price, not 3C which is a head's up telling us a turn is coming), we'll have the Leading Indication I'm looking for as described Thursday for this move.
 HYG 3 min leading negative intraday already seeing deterioration...

HYG 3 min trend which is in a leading negative position, but these are just near term, the clincher is on a daily or multi-hour chart...
2 hour HYG leading negative on a primary trend basis, not just price (which you should check out and compare to the SPX if you have the ability or haven't seen it here before), but in 3C with a new leading negative low in place.

 Our Pro-Sentiment Indicator which has been in line recently with the market is showing early signs of deterioration in to this afternoon, this is much faster than some of the cycles we have seen previously like the February cycle.

Giving additional evidence to early Leading Indicator deterioration are the VIX futures and related VIX assets.
 As I mentioned Thursday and just above, I found it strange that VIX protection wasn't bid in to a 3-day weekend alone, much less the Jobs report on Friday with the cash market closed and only 45 minutes of futures trade available after the print at 8:30 a.m. However, that weakness seen on the inverted SPX (price) chart above which allows you to see the relative performance of VIX short term futures (blue) from Thursday was in line today showing that there was improvement in the move toward protection. I'm not very impressed with this chart on its own, but add spot VIX below...

 Spot VIX weakness/under-performance Thursday and out-performance vs the inverted SPX (green) today.

However the real clincher was the initial signs during the cash market in actual VIX Futures below...
This is the intraday 3C chart of VIX futures with a positive divegrence building in protection while the risk assets like the averages saw migration of a negative divegrence out to 5 and even 10 minute charts in a single day. This kind of confirmation makes sense with the 3C signals seen today in the averages, IT DIDN'T MAKE MUCH SENSE ON THURSDAY UNLESS SOMEONE ALREADY KNEW THE OUTCOME WHICH IS WHAT I SPECULATED MID-WEEK LAST WEEK.

Here are the intraday and important trend signals in VXX.
 VXX 3 min intraday,  this is not a signal to buy, just as the 3C negatives in the averages are not a signal to sell short, it is a signal of the underlying process that started on today's move. Remember, there was no accumulation Thursday when you'd think they'd want it the most unless they knew something in advance on a NFP leak which seems likely not just by the strangeness of the print, but by actual trades seconds before the NFP printed.

 Just as migration of the negative divergences took place in the averages, see SPY below intraday), this 3 min VXX chart is leading positive. Again, not a buy signal, but an indication that things are moving in the anticipated/forecasted direction with the forecasted end result.

As you already saw intraday, the SPY negative divegrence in to higher prices as it appears, as forecasted, higher prices above the triangle would be distributed. This is also good multiple asset confirmation considering these are examples of a risk on (SPY) asset and a risk off/protection (VXX) asset and they are showing exactly the opposite intraday signals today. In other words, the process of rotating out of risk at higher prices and in to protection at lower prices looks to have a good start on the first day.



As for the longer term strategic view, the 30 min VXX leading positive divegrence which would be similar in confirmation to on the SPY 30 min (strategic) chart...

SPY 30 min. These are not only good multiple asset and multiple timeframe confirmation signals, but also are good signals telling us what the highest probability resolution is for smaller moves like the one started today, which is why we let the trade come to us when we know what the probabilities of the resolution are and trade WITH THEM.

Yields generally gained intraday after dropping lower since Thursday's close putting them right about the same area, although the SPX is a bit higher. Intraday this looks like market support, but between the two days it looks like this is a pump/false breakout and leading indicators are starting to show signs of it early on.

I think what will likely happen is that we'll see the 15 min 3C charts start to deteriorate and Leading Indicators should be giving strong, unambiguous signals by then,  that's when I want to take advantage of the "come to us" trade, rather than getting greedy and either chasing risk or entering too early afraid to miss the trade. We haven't had strong signals until Thursday for a reason looking back at market performance, we'll have the signals we need, so again I urge patience.

The process looks to already be under way, I doubt we'll be surprised by missing a downside move, the signals should all be there and strong, that has been how this market has been operating more and more since QE ended.

As for Index futures tonight, they look to be reasonably in line, there are some slight divergences that I'll check on later, but I think this triangle based bounce plays out as was our forecast for the week from last Thursday. I'll be watching for HYG to continue to deteriorate, VIX futures to continue to gain and the averages to deteriorate to the 15 min chart which is their "Gas in the tank" level.

The same is essentially true of Index futures (7-15 min positive charts last week in to this week).

Just let the process play out, we got a much bigger than anticipated start today in the averages and even confirming assets (HYG, VXX, VIX Futures, AAPL, etc.).

I know the market has been tough in this triangle-shaped lateral zone as mentioned last week in IMPORTANT: AAPL Set-up & Market Movement, the move in AAPL over almost 7 trading weeks has been +0.03%, a pretty tough environment, but also not the one you want to get caught on the wrong side of considering the potential gains and potential risk or even from an open risk or opportunity cost basis, from the linked post above on last Thursday, AAPL...


AAPL has moved EXACTLY 0.03%, less than 3/10ths of a percent, for all intents and purposes over the last nearly the last SEVEN TRADING WEEKS, AAPL HAS NOT MOVED AT ALL!"

I'll check on futures before turning in, but I expect our near term forecast to hold and the process to unfold, although it may be faster than normal, we still need to let the market tell us.

Have a great night!

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