Pre-Market

The conventional wisdom is that overnight futures ran up (SPX about 8 points) based on "hopes" that the Japanese government would cut corporate tax rates in hopes of promoting a "consumption tax", which the market is said to have liked and therefore rallied overnight... I guess so?!?

Retail Sales at 8:30 didn't move the market much either way because the headline was a slight miss at .2% vs consensus of .3%, but the internals like sales "ex autos" came in at .5%, were much better so the report was a non-factor coming up before the September meeting in which most think the FO_M_C will begin the taper.

I'm guessing we see the same early weakness, there were signs of it yesterday, but as you recall they were mixed between the SPY and IWM/DIA so not quite as strong as last week's afternoon signals. We'll just go along with the market, look for our windows of opportunity and take what is worth taking at this point, at least until we reach the area in which the big picture really takes on a new and probably very last chance to get involved.