Quick Update

Before the open this morning you may have seen the NYSE invoked rule 48 for Extreme Market Volatility, in which mandatory opening indications are not required. I didn't read the whole note as I was busy looking at other markets and indications, but I wouldn't be surprised if they blamed it on weather in NYC.

In any case, things are not looking better since last night, which really had no news catalyst to send the market lower, but remember we had some very ugly closing charts on Friday and yesterday's charts as posted here, Market Update late afternoon , were not a smoking gun, they weren't pretty either.

Last night's odd signals from Odd ES (SPX E-Mini Futures) Action, posted at 1:15 vs the 2:45 a.m. start of the move in EUR/CHF and seen hours before any possible SNB currency intervention, may just have been the smoking gun. I find it odd that it occurred pretty quickly, pretty severely and right before today's F_O_M_C meeting starts in front of tomorrow's policy announcement.

I'm obviously still checking around as the cash market opens as it takes a few minutes for 3C indicators to catch up to the gap down, but the Dow has lost approximately 475 points since Thursday/Friday's intraday highs to this morning's lows thus far.

What I'm seeing on some of the Index future charts  (same ones that were looking odd last night before this move lower started), interestingly look similar to market performance. As you know from Friday's, The Week Ahead post, we were expecting better relative performance from the Russell 2000 which was the case yesterday and is the case today.

Some of the best looking (on a relative basis) Index futures charts are those of the Russell 2000 futures and as you might imagine, some of the worst looking are those of the NASDAQ 100 futures which is down as I write, over -2% this morning.

I also find it worth noting that the SKEW Index or what is sometimes called, "The Black Swan Indicator" has recently been sharply elevated in to the red zone with a huge 2-day move last week.

As for some of the example charts...

ES 1 min, so far it has been in line with the overnight decline, however there's a possible relative positive divegrence forming which should at first slow the downside momentum, whether it can go further than that, we'll have to wait and see, especially on the charts of the averages rather than Index futures.

 1 min NQ/NASDAQ 100 futures are near perfectly in line with the overnight decline.

The 5 min NQ/NDX futures chart is still leading deeply negative.

As is the 5 min ES chart.

The 7 min TF/Russell 2000 chart is also leading negative in a big way on a longer term chart, but overall, TF looks a lot better than ES and NQ.

This is the ES 15 min chart leading negative which is quite a migration move in the 3C charts in such a short period, but that's what grabbed my attention late last night or very early this morning.

 NQ 15 min leading negative as well, the red box highlighted is Friday's action.

And the USD/JPY.

Something doesn't pass the smell test here, this appears to be a SECOND bounce that has failed prematurely, although "failed" might be premature.

Again, being so close to the F_O_M_C and with SKEW elevated, it's certainly something I want to look at as a possible leak of policy on Wednesday... yes I know the meeting hasn't even really kicked off yet, but as I showed you last week, Jim Bullard's comments from last week were looking for almost the exact same rate hike by 2016 starting at almost the exact same time as an interview he gave on Bloomberg radio 9 months earlier. Bullard has said a LOT of things just over the past 4 months that have been totally contradictory and in some cases in as little as 2 weeks he's done a 180 about face, but this particular bit about where the F_E_D Funds rate should stand in 2016 at 4+% when he becomes a voting member and some mention of a 1st quarter rate hike, it makes you wonder how far out F_E_D policy may have already been charted.