Daily Wrap, F_E_D Edition

"  But what’s important when you’re in that hedge fund mode is to not do a thing remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view that it’s important to create a new truth to develop a fiction. " Jim Cramer

"A lot of times, when I was short at my hedge fund and I was positioned short, meaning I needed it down, I would create a level of activity beforehand that could drive the futures.  It doesn’t take much money.  Or if I were long and I would want to make things a little bit rosy, I would go in and take a bunch of stocks and make sure that they’re higher, maybe commit $5 million in capital to do it, and I could affect it.

What you’re seeing now is maybe – it probably is a bigger market now – maybe you need $10 million capital and knock the stuff down.  But it’s a fun game and it’s a lucrative game.... By the way, no one else in the world would ever admit that, but I don’t care...I’m not gonna say it on TV. "

"Now you can’t foment.  That’s a violation of –You can’t create yourself an impression that a stock’s down.  But you do it anyway ‘cause the SEC doesn’t understand it.  That’s the only sense that I would say this is illegal. This is just actually blatantly illegal.  But when you have six days and your company may be in doubt because you’re down, I think it’s really important to foment"

 "Again, when your company’s in a survival mode it’s really important to defeat Research in Motion.  You get the Pisanis of the world and the people talking about it as if there’s something wrong with RIMM.  Then you would call the Journal and you get the bozo reporter on Research in Motion, and you would feed that Palm’s got a killer it’s gonna give away.

These are all the things you must do on a day like today.  And if you’re not doing it, maybe you shouldn’t be in the game.

 The great thing about the market is it has nothing to do with the actual stocks."

What I posted above is just a taste of Jim Cramer being honest and giving you the best, real information on the market that he's ever let out of his mouth, although he says he'd never say it on his show on CNBC. Creating a lie by investing some money, lying to the "Pissani's of the world and other media "bozos" is all part of the game. For the full interview transcript, you can find it here, this was just about the time the I-phomne was about to come out, just before ATT got the first 5-year contract.

Why am I posting something that's so old and has nothing to do with the F_E_D? Because this is the market, when I say, "If price is anything, it's deceptive", this is what I mean and this is just a short part of the interview, he goes on to tell you how they do it, how inexpensive it is to do, these are what I typically call cycles that are set up by Wall Street. I always explain as well that when they create them, there's a reason.

In the last post I talked about what we saw during the week of 12/2-12/6 when the NFP came out on 12/6. We had 4 consecutive down days that week and as mentioned in the last post, before the NFP on Friday I had been talking about the effort to hold HYG together (4-days preceding the NFP) and holding VXX down (3-days preceding the NFP), then on that Friday when the NFP was released, it was a horrible print for those who want to see QE continue, the entire week before everyone had said if there was a decent print at "XYZ", the market would fall apart, the print blew away "XYZ" and according to everyone, the market should have crashed, but it didn't and part of what saved it was the Arbitrage lever of HYG/VXX which was being worked all week.

The point simply is as Cramer said, "It's important to develop a new truth to create a fiction". The new truth on that Friday was the market didn't care about the better than expected NFP print that raised the chances of a QE taper, the fiction was created in my view and my view was posted well before the NFP, by manipulating the market via the SPY arbitrage as well as numerous other levers. This is of course a fiction, but Cramer makes it clear that this really isn't that expensive to do and they media bozos at CNBC and WSJ are easy to use to facilitate this fiction.

Last week I saw something that caused me to take profits in the trading portfolio and open some long positions, in fact mostly long positions because it looked like the market was going to bounce. We saw some strange stuff like that 10k block of ES contracts dumped around 10 p.m. Sunday night when the volume is at its lowest in futures which created a loss of over 10 Es points in less than a minute. I said that night, "The only reason I can see someone doing this is so they can accumulate on the cheap" and that's what happened the rest of the overnight session.

This misdirection, this business of "not doing anything remotely truthful" is what I have been showing you for years with the help of our indicators. This is exactly why (and this is an extreme case) we have charts like this...

 This SPY 5 min positive divergence from last week had us all set with long positions by Thursday the 12th, the SPY has popped a bit since then and is still positive in the short term cycle.

Now...

The longer term 30 min chart is clearly leading negative and shows a trend of strong distribution, look at each of the divergences making a lower 3C move, each of those cycles was set up on a shorter chart like the 5 min above and each was used to distribute (sell ) in to whether selling or selling short. If you look at where we are now, it looks like we are ready for another bounce and how are our trading positions set up? Long. How are our longer term core shorts set up and where do we try to add to them? Short and at highs where the risk is the lowest. Is the trend improving or getting worse?

Remember last week I said the positives are largely contained to 1-5 min charts, after that there is a clear delineation between that apparent cycle and the larger trend. I'll show some examples, but what you are seeing is an  "new truth" to mask reality. I've seen this for years in every timeframe, but I've never seen it to this extent, I've never seen such extreme examples and with the F_E_D sporting a nearly $4 trillion dollar balance sheet, owning approx. a third of all 10-year equivalents in bonds, it's not hard to understand why stocks got to where they are and it's not hard to understand that they can't stand on their own feet without the F_E_D, this is the basis of why we have such an extreme position in these charts and there are very few times that I have witnesses something like this turn around, it's just a matter of time and as extreme as we are now, I'd say the timing can be any second.

Other examples...

Remember the new "Trading Portfolio" was started with short positions about 10-days ago, it was up +9%, then by last week a bounce brewing as evidenced on charts like this QQQ 3 min (1-5 min) had us covering the shorts and by December 12th (Thursday), we were already set up with longs and today that same portfolio is now at a gain of +16%. However, in Context...

 There's a clear delineation between the 3 or 5 min QQQ 3C chart (short duration, small accumulation) vs the larger charts starting at 10 mins.

Another change of character as we see deeper and deeper distribution is 3C itself, while this divegrence is actually much longer, note to the left there use to be at least an inline move in 3C to the upside, now it's just negative to the downside, my interpretation is distribution is heavier and heavier.

The IWM is similar.

Last week it was one of the clearest signals of short term accumulation on a 5 min chart, by the 12th we had covered trading shorts and were all set with long positions that have already lifted the trading portfolio from +9% to +15% and the move we expect hasn't even really started or not to the degree I'd expect. Remember as I often say, Wall St. has a reason for everything they do, Cramer outlined how they do a lot of this in the interview above, 3C is showing the literal, actual evidence of that. The point is, most of the time to accomplish something, the market must be driven to emotional extremes, thus my earlier description of the market being like a pendulum on a grandfather clock, no small adjustments to the real discounting of value here and there as "Efficient Market Theory " would suggest, however there's no randomness to price moves either as we can see as "Random Walk Theory" would suggest. The truth is what I'd prefer to call the"Invisible Hand" as we don't know exactly who is creating the movement: herding of funds following order flow, the NY F_E_D's Open Market's Desk or what some call the Plunge Protection team, the Bank of International Settlements?

What we do know is that manipulation, even blatantly illegal manipulation of the market is so common place as Cramer says, no one cares because the SEC doesn't understand it or do anything about it and as Cramer also says, "If you're not doing it, maybe you shouldn't be in the game". 

To the dismay of many of my students whose first experience in my class was this interview, the truth of the market is as Cramer said above...

" The great thing about the market is it has nothing to do with the actual stocks."

My students, many from a generation that believed the market worked on valuations, were shell shocked the first night of my class, but to be honest about the market, first you must strip away the illusions. 

I didn't like it either when I first discovered there was more to the market than what I had spent nearly a decade mastering only to learn that this one indicator I created shattered all of what I use to believe was reality and uncovered the true realities, I agree, the market has very little to do with the stocks, it has to do with the manipulation of cycles in the market and worse.

IWM 15 min...

Again, the delineation between  short duration bounce and the longer term trend of money flow is very distinct, also once again we see there's another change of character in the market, one in which there is not 3C move up, even if it was in leading negative position, just continual lower highs and lows.

So why am I spending so much time explaining what we see every day? Tomorrow is an important day, it was just a few weeks ago that the majority believed the F_O_M_C would start to taper in December, now (as usual)  the majority believe the taper is February or March, I can see this based on a couple of reasons, but they are just my opinion. The average hedge fund has dramatically underperformed the SPX with an average of 6% and that's not including the 2-3.5% management fee and 20-50% incentive fee of any profits they make for their clients. Now consider, these funds with every resource you can imagine have made on average +5% for the year, out trading portfolio has almost tripled that in just above 2 trading weeks, I could shut it down right now and rank in the top 10% of the best performing funds and without the excessive fees.

While they are engaged of "The Art of Looking Smart", Window Dressing before year's end, one part of me thinks, the F_E_D doesn't want to do anything to screw things up for them because as of January 2nd, a lot of these funds would (and will) have huge redemption notices from clients as they realize they could have done better by buying the SPY with no fees at all.

As far as I know, the consensus of an F_O_M_C taper is to start very small and pullback of $10 billion a month of treasury purchases out of the $85 billion a month in treasury and MBS purchases, then the F_E_D would wait and see how it effects the economy and how the economy does, really it's a drop in the bucket and an insignificant amount, but the psychological factor is the problem. Last time the F_O_M_C really considered a taper in early summer, the bond market drove the benchmark 10-year yield up 100 basis points or 1% which effected nearly every loan you can apply for. There's also some concern that Inflation is light and under the F_E_D's typical 2% target.

You may take this information and have a better guess than me, I'm not really comfortable taking guesses because you can get that anywhere. What I do want to point out is the same action in VXX / VIX futures and HYG (Credit)  this week (although a bit smaller) which was last seen the week of Non-Farm Payrolls. As I said in the last post and as Cramer pointed out, it's not about the stocks, in this case it was about the manipulation of the market. I don't have any idea whether the Non-Farm Payrolls were leaked ahead of time or not, but I do know is that we have plenty of credible evidence showing someone was making sure that the market would respond bullishly no matter what the NFP print was. Wouldn't you know it, the print suggested a major drop in the market as a F_E_D taper looked much more likely, but the market actually rallied for the first time after 5 consecutive days down. Does that make sense? The market is down for 5 consecutive days and then gets the worst print that had been much feared and the market miraculously rallies on this data for a move of +1.12% higher? Honestly I wouldn't know what to think if I hadn't already noticed and commented on the obvious effort to stabilize the losses in HYG and to keep VXX from moving higher, both were used that Friday in the SPY Arbitrage used a a manipulation lever to drive the market higher.

So one again, I mention this before tomorrow's F_O_M_C because we've seen similar action this week in the same 2 assets and the bounce set up last week really hasn't made the kind of move they usually do,  this may be because of the confusion in the market evidenced by a 3rd Hindenburg Omen or it may be that the bounce is there to create a positive perception ( A New truth that is nothing more than a fiction) on the release of the policy statement tomorrow.

Here's some of the evidence of what I'm specifically talking about outside of the 3C divergences and the Index futures divergences that we already are aware of.

 HYG Credit (10 min) shows the 4 days I was talking about in which they were supporting HYG before the NFP on 12/6, then HYG moves up triggering the SPY Arbitrage to support the market, remember this was at the NFP when the market should have gone down by anyone's standards.

The more recent support isn't as active, see 16/17th as the F_O_M_C is tomorrow.

 HYG 5 min chart shows the same accumulation the 4 days leading up to the NFP on 12'6, the move higher triggers support from the SPY arbitrage. It seems very clear (as it did before the NFP as I commented on it before the NFP) that the SPY Arb was being used to create a "new reality" in which the market rallied on an NFP print everyone expected to send the market to a deep pullback.

As distribution was apparent the Trading portfolio which was just opened went all short except for MCP and maybe 1 other asset, by the 12th we had covered all shorts for a +9% portfolio gain and by the close Thursday, all long positions were in place, we just had to be patient. A rising HYG is supportive of the market which has been supportive of our longs as the trading portfolio is now at a 15+% gain, the point though is the same kind of support as we saw before the NFP, although not as strong, although today it ended with a leading positive divegrence.

 The VXX 10 min chart (which needs to move down to support the market via Arbitrage) shows how they held VXX back from making high highs on the 3rd, 4th and 5th with the NFP on the 6th, that's also when VXX dropped after being pegged in place for 3 days (HYG was being supported the same 3 days plus 1 previous day for 4 days before the NFP).

As for our trading portfolio positions, again by the 12th we had taken short profits and were all set with longs. Note the leading negative divegrence in VXX today, not only has VXX been pegged like the week of the NFP, but today's leading negative on an attempted breakout wreaks of intervention to kill any possible breakout attempt and keep VXX prepared to support the F_O_M_C tomorrow through the same arbitrage mechanism used on 12/6 (Non-Farm Payrolls).

 Intraday on the 1 min chart, (remember VXX trades opposite the market), you can see where we covered shorts and entered longs by the 12th we were done. The leading negative divergence of the last 2 days, while only on an intraday chart, is still enough to do the same thing they did with the NFP.

If this is done, the perception will be that the market doesn't care about a strong payrolls report which is the yard stick being used for QE tapering to a large degree, but "IF" the F_O_M_C decides to taper tomorrow, it looks like they have the market set to act as it did on Dec. 6th on the strong Non-Farm Payrolls print, remember good economic news is bad news for QE, but as Cramer said, 

"THE MARKET HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL STOCKS" and while this is not the same kind of manipulation Cramer was talking about way back then before the first I-Phone came out, his point is the market is rigged, he rigged it when he ran his fund, it's pervasive and his advice was...

"If you are not willing to do this, if you are not willing to foment and break the law, if you are not prepared to do everything you can to prevent any sort of truth from slipping out, if you are not prepared to create a new reality, YOU SHOULDN'T BE IN THE GAME".

THAT'S NOT ONE MAN'S VIEWS, THAT'S THE WALL ST. CULTURE AND DON'T FORGET CRAMER IS GS ALUMNI.

The advantage we have with 3C is we are not trying to determine whether a stock is overvalued or undervalued, it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is what moves the market, whether it's legal or not, whether it's hedge funds/private equity, the NY F_E_D's Open Market's Desk, the Bank for International Settlements or a mix of all of them as they know what's coming across the tape, 3C shows us what they are doing. We may not know why, we may not know who, but we sure as heck can follow along and rather than fight Wall St. we flow with it.

This is VXX today (1 min) intraday, note distribution intraday around the 11 a.m. hour sending VXX lower and as an aside, note the EOD positive divegrence.

We know that HYG up and VXX down turn on the market support of the SPY arbitrage largely driven by algos that interpret a falling VIX as a risk on signal and rising HY Credit (HYG) as a risk on signal, what do they do? Buy.

This is today's SPY Arbitrage Model from Capital Context, note the time in which the SPY Arbitrage was activated, 11 a.m., the same time VXX saw a 3C negative divegrence (distribution) that sent it lower and if we look at HYG...

 We can see HYG 9blue) vs the SPX (green) not only has been supported and showing better relative performance than the correlation suggests back on the 13th, but very clearly in the late hours of the morning today with a leading positive relative performance signal.

Intraday HYG shows better relative performance vs the SPY at EXACTLY 11 a.m. just as the SPY Arbitrage shows, performance falls off at the closing hour, but VXX makes up for that with a deeper fall.

 Note VXX's deeper or worsening relative performance vs the SPX in to the afternoon, it seems clear that the move in HYG endangered the SPY arbitrage so extra pressure was simply put on VXX, likely hitting a pack of stops and sending it lower, in any case, they kept the lever working.

However, levers and tricks only last so long when there's real demand for protection, as you know, I've never seen such a strong 4 hour leading positive divegrence in actual VIX futures below.

4h. VIX futures.

As for Spit VIX...

 VIX did everything we expected as expectations were laid out while VIX was still below the 20-day in November. First the Bollinger Band Squeeze was expected to create a highly directional move, we expected an upside breakout because of the accumulation in VIX futures above.

At B we got the breakout, but we expected price to hang around the area before moving higher and specifically pulling back to the 20-day average at "C" as it did, now we have a 6th consecutive close higher in the VIX, but note today's close is not the strongest candle with a Doji, so if arbitrage is activated, a pullback here is likely, but it won't last long.

If the actual VIX futures divergence isn't enough for you, then check the daily VIX 3C divergence.

This is the largest, longest leading positive VIX 3C divergence on the chart, it's well above any past VIX rally and market correction.

As for other leading indicators...

 High Yield Credit is not used for the SPY arbitrage, in fact it's not used for any manipulative lever so it's a good barometer of what credit is really doing. Looking at a longer 15 min chart, HY credit's leading negative position looks a lot like 3C's leading negative divergences in the same place, it wouldn't be surprising, after all the mantra is "Credit leads, equities follow" so if HY credit is leading, 3C is following, price is deceptive right now, but these levers can't be maintained for long especially as more and more of them break or don't work like they use to if at all.

 HY credit vs the SPX intraday

As for sentiment, out two indicators show pretty decent sentiment here, the other...

Shows some recent following, but not leading.

I'm very interested in tomorrow's policy statement, we know about the knee jerk reaction, if we get a taper and the market responds well at first, we may either be seeing what I've laid out, creating a new reality with a fiction or we may actually be seeing the knee jerk process being created in advance, after all we are still long our trading positions.

As for the excellent leading indication of Yields...

 intraday we saw reversion to the mean (which I talked a lot about the other night and posted an article about), that's in the green box, however it seems that the SPY arbitrage moved the SPX (green) away from reversion to the mean right around 11 am , the same time the lever was pulled and created a area where the SPX is rich vs Yields which act like a magnet so short term, the SPX is rich, but we know that's because of the manipulation of the SPY arbitrage, they can use it all they want, as long as we are on the right side of the trade.

 The longer term has shown the SPX lower and likely to pull up to what I thought would be the $1800 level to revert to the mean. Also note that Yields didn't make a higher high today so they are already starting to lead negative as they do so well. To the left at the white arrow, Yields were making higher lows and highs as the SPX was still making lower lows, it called the move up in the SPX.

Longer term or highest probability, for the SPY to revert to the mean, it has a move to approx. $40. Of course we have to allow for QE, but as you see in the past, the correlation has been very good and now it is severely dislocated.

As for the averages...

 SPY 5 min, like I said last week, the positives stop at 5 mins for the most part, you can see where the trading portfolio went short, where we covered and prepared for the next cycle, thus far we still have a 5 min leading positive so I think it is possible either via knee jerk reaction or just flat out accumulation for whatever reason (to make a QE taper not look so bad, to take advantage of leaked information-who knows?) , as long as we are on the right side of this trade, we know what the highest probabilities look like, we know how fast and how many changes of character there have been. Price is deceptive, but if we can ride the coattails, why fight them?

 At the very next timeframe, there's a clear leading negative divegrence so we already know what we want to do with higher prices if we get them other than take profits on select trading longs.

 Isn't it interesting that the SPY intraday chart saw accumulation around 11 a.m., either the algos, the market makers/specialists or some other tape readers knew what was going down, we didn't have to know the arbitrage had been activated, all we had to know was what smart money was doing and toward the EOD, things got a bit ugly.

Just like I said last night, if we no longer have a valid reason for keeping trading positions on the long side open, they will be closed and moved to ash or whatever opportunity may present itself as high probability. 

All new divergences start on the fastest charts so the positive in the 1 min VXX charts along with the negative in the SPY charts both at the EOD, may in fact be a change of direction, I said numerous times the past day that I would not be surprised if this bounce was over BEFORE the F_O_M_C. If it is not or if it gets even stronger, we know they are either running the market for the QE reaction like the NFP reaction or they have inside information, IT WOULDN'T BE THE FIRST TIME THE F_E_D HAS SENT PRIVATE EQUITY (154 FIRMS) INFORMATION (THE MINUTES) A DAY AHEAD OF THE RELEASE AND EVEN WENT THROUGH THE TROUBLE OF EMAILING IT TO THEM. *AS A REMINDER TO SOME OF THE LONGER TERM MEMBERS. WE DID CATCH AN OBVIOUS F_O_M_C LEAK ABOUT 2.5 YEARS AGO, IT WAS ABOUT 2 HOURS BEFORE THE STATEMENT AND STOOD OUT SO BOLDLY THAT WE MOVED WITH INCREDIBLE HASTE TO GET REPOSITIONED WITHOUT EVER QUESTIONING THE SIGNAL AND WERE CORRECT.

 IWM 5 min doesn't have the same strength as the SPY, but we've seen this all week, remember, "Thee IWM leads the market?" The positive divegrence on the 11th was clear as day and caused us to enter URTY which is at a profit.

Intraday it's interesting that the IWM had the same exact positive divegrence intraday as the SPY on the SPY arbitrage activation around 11a.m.

 QQQ 3 min with the leading negative that caused us to open the first positions in the trading portfolio on the short side, then they were covered and we entered longs and were done with our work by the close Thursday. We have a leading positive in to the close today.

 QQQ 5 min shows last week's positive divegrence clearly and the in line status at the green arrow, that's time to be patient, today's close was not very pretty at the larger block trade sizes.

Intraday again the early positive in late morning stands out, you see, even Wall St. herds. Again late day activity wasn't that strong, it wasn't horrible, but I'm guessing price may open a bit weak tomorrow morning.

As for the correlation with the carry pairs, it looks pretty good intraday, but looking at it with a larger perspective you can see clearly the carry pairs are failing to move the market, this must be why they have reverted to the SPY Arbitrage, like I said earlier, fewer and fewer levers of manipulation are working. Remember when it was the Yen slam overnight just a few weeks ago until that stopped working. What did they replace that with? A 10k block of ES contracts in the illiquid hours of Sunday night trade! That's desperate!

This looks like pretty good correlation with ES, but toward the EOD and after it's not so hot and anything longer than 1 min shows how broken it is.

There has been a flight to safety that most are not aware of, it has lasted all year, but has especially picked up even today.

 This is the flight to safety in to the CHF, we've seen it a lot lately, it looks opposite to the normal FX pairs because this is $USD/CHF meaning long USD/short CHF so a drop means CHF is seeing higher prices.

Here's the pair for the year, a new low for the year just put in shows the desperation to move to a safe haven asset.

Finally for today, you know I struggled with whether to leave PCLN short or go for the short term trade, I went for the short term trade and left core /trend positions (short ) open. Here's why...

 Long term or highest probabilities we have not only the typical distribution range, but an enourmous leading negative divegrence (distribution) so I wasn't keen to let go of the short in the trading portfolio, but...

This intraday chart shows a head fake below the yellow trendline and a huge leading positive on a 5 min chart, I just couldn't ignore that. you know my target, that's where the trading position will be sold and entered short and core short positions may be added to.

Hopefully MCP will keep moving and get us to stage 2 soon. Gold/GDX will be ready soon, I surmise at the same time the market is ready to turn down from this "bounce" which hasn't been that impressive, yet we've still managed to add another 6% to the trading portfolio thus far.

As for futures tonight, the Nikkei 225 futures look very strong, there was a negative divegrence in the Yen that correlates with the NKD move higher, I find it interesting before the F_O_M_C and wonder if it holds up overnight. The EUR/JPY also participated on Yen weakness tonight.

1 min charts of ES, NQ and TF all have negative divergences to one degree or another, I don't find them that interesting as to think they'll hold up overnight, however, at the 5 min range , only NQ is in line, both ES and TF are leading negative, this is one chart that suggests to me that we may very well se the end of any bounce before the F_O_M_C tomorrow, in fact, it's usually pretty reliable so I'm just hoping that our longs make it though the overnight, I imagine PCLN will and if it will, I suspect most of the others will.

The 15 min positives that were there last week are still there so the 5 min may need to migrate to those charts before sending the market lower, NQ and Es lead while TF lags (just like the IWM).

We do have a Dominant P/V relationship in 3 of the 4 major averages, it is Price Down/Volume Down, this is the dominant relationship seen during bear markets, it's also the relationship with the least amount of influence, it typically says "Nothing is extreme, carry on" so I'm not making much of it.

I don't find anything out of place with regard to market breadth today, however today is the 4th Hindenburg Omen (the last two that have sent the market lower have come in packs like this, so I think it's likely it leads to at least a correction in its own right, again this is a clear indication of confusion among the market's internals.

The only thing I find more and more disturbing today is the MCO Summation Index, now at a severe negative divergence and under -1000.

I'll report in if anything changes in futures, right now I think we are well positioned to not only take some gains out of the market but to fill out core positions.

REMEMBER, WHENEVER THERE'S A F_E_D / F_O_M_C EVENT, YOU MUST EXPECT A KNEE JERK REACTION THAT LASTS FROM A COUPLE OF HOURS TO A COUPLE OF DAYS, IT IS ALMOST ALWAYS WRONG AND ALMOST ALWAYS FADED, IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE IF THE HYG/VXX ACTION WAS SET UP TO SUPPORT AN INITIAL POSITIVE KNEE JERK, BUT BEWARE OF IT, ANCHOR EXPECTATIONS AROUND THIS SO YOU DON'T MAKE AN EMOTIONAL DECISION.

End of Day Update-Bounce to carry on?

One thing I keep thinking about as one of the defining characteristics of it was seen last week was the week of the NFP print that would have normally sunk the market, but instead it rallied, I think there's a very strong case to be made (whether there was a leak or not), that the Friday NFP rally was set up in advance and was going to rally whether it was a QE friendly or unfriendly print as it happened to be.

The reason I believe this was documented days BEFORE the NFP in my comments that it looked like the invisible hand had spent 4-days trying to halt the decline in one of the market arbitrage assets, HYG which needs to go up to support the market and spent the 3 days prior to the NFP holding back VXX which needs to go down for the arbitrage to help the market. This was set in advance, we saw the same thing last week and this week, so dare I say that the initial knee jerk reaction that they want to appear tomorrow on the F_O_M_C is a positive one like the NFP, no matter what the outcome is (or perhaps there was and is a leak).

In Index futures, the 15 min charts still look ok as if they could support this bounce we first saw signs of last week, the VIX futures on the other hand look worse than ever on multiple timeframes and as you know VXX comes right from the VIX futures and it is an arbitrage asset that needs to drop for this to work.

Today we saw the negative divergences in VXX and there's outperformance on a relative basis of HYG today, VXX went negative intraday very clearly at 11 a.m., guess what else happened at 11 a.m., the SPY arbitrage was in effect and working with a +.30 bias.

Sentiment indicators are kind of lost and adrift like they were yesterday.

Not only in 3C, but in actual relative terms, VXX started out the day outperforming the SPX, at 11 a.m. it crossed and started underperforming, the same time as the 3C divergences in VXX and VIX futures, all a little too coincidental for me.

Yields fell today, that means the market doesn't have the same magnetic pull to the upside, but for full reversion to the mean assuming yields stay where they are, the SPX would have to hit $1800 for reversion to the mean which is what we look for with the indicator, otherwise it's starting a negative divegrence, but needs the market to move up to create it.

HY credit is drifting too as if it doesn't know what to do.

The Most Shorted Russell 3000 Stocks are outperforming today in a squeeze of sorts so there's some effort to make this bounce work.

3C's signals for support of HYG are not good, they are there by a thread, but as long as it has better relative performance than VXX, the arbitrage works.

I'd say they will continue to try to get this bounce to work, maybe it is specifically set up to work tomorrow whether ther's good or bad news on QE, maybe there's a leak, I doubt it though, it's all about perception and a positive knee jerk reaction to a negative F_O_M_C is useful for a short time.

There's VERY clear demarkation between 5 min positives and 10-15 min negatives, I'd say as soon as this bounce completes, the negatives will overwhelm again.