Market Update

While I was writing the AAPL post, 3 members who have become near experts with 3C wrote me and said, "Look at AAPL", seeing the same thing I was pointing out, for such a slow day with few emails, to get 3 all while I'm writing the article is rare, it's just that obvious I guess.

OK, volume is pathetic, I'm surprised they didn't rocket this thing through 1.5% on the day, but that would just be a short term effect of the low volume and the ease in moving a market, if we had enough members willing to go in on a position all at once, there are several stocks we could move on our own today (not AAPL).

Index futures, especially the SPX e minis are negative and they have confirmation with other Index futures as well as the averages, I'm a bit surprised to see it, perhaps they are worried about Thursday or are simply booking what they can before the End of year.

ES intraday, but recall 5 and now 15 min are negative, we never waited for 15 min charts in trading positions before so it's more extreme than usual.

Averages are negative intraday with paltry gains, Q's up 0.03%, SPY up less than a quarter of a percent, DIA about 1/3rd of a percent. The IWM is the outlier, however trade action in the IWM is exactly the same as yesterday, 1 min perfectly in line, longer charts, really ugly.

 SPY 5 min, but note the time of the divergence, right after the F_O_M_C, I think there's a hint there about how the taper is being taken by the big boys, "Fiscal Tightening"

 IWM seemingly worked by a skillful market marker/specialist intraday, but likely working both sides of price and underlying.

IWM 5 min.

The QQQ, exactly the same off the F_O_M_C.

QQQ/FOMC 5 min

Industry groups are far worse, Financials and Tech.... Energy is more mixed, I'll cover USO as the Futures for brent are looking better.

What I don't like yet is VXX, it's rare that the 5 min Index futures are that negative and VXX is not flying, I have a feeling it has to do with unwinding long exposure and at the same time unwinding the VIX protection that was bought for those longs. I don't want to take any positions on a volume/half day like this any way, but I especially don't without VXX confirming.

HYG is getting slammed again today, I'm not sure if there was an effort to jump start the arbitrage from yesterday, but credit players are getting out of the way.

 They're moving out from yesterday afternoon intraday and..

Longer term. If I had to follow 1 asset only, it would be credit, these are much better informed players, too bad HYG doesn't have enough Beta.

The Yen is holding it's ground and base-like area.

Other than that, it's hard to get much out of today with volume like this, but it's something, the credit move is the most interesting for today other than maybe AAPL, the Yen is a larger window and the carry trades, but they are not going to take losses exiting on this volume.

We'll see if anything else interesting pops up, that gut feeling hasn't changed, especially seeing Credit and AAPL.