Hey @Malaga I look forward to visiting you there. If you were too busy to get crays and I'm in the water, we’d try for a bag limit whenever you like if it suits your style. One of the last times in the water there I was fetching stuck pots for a commercial boat west of Rotto during winter. That was fun but cold... unlike your lovely pic. What a great escape for a chat under the beautiful WA sun and such nice people.
With the exception of Friday's action, last week was about as neutral as they get.
This week will be influenced by uncertainty about upcoming earnings releases + the specter of impending tariffs + uncertainty about the responsive posture of the Fed (imo more worried than they let on) + the president's personal issues combined with any potential proxy moves that make use of US supplied Saudi assets. The most important modifier continues to the president's need for an up trending market into 2020. Well, that and the cheap but very useful real estate that separates words from action.
You know how when you have plenty of disposable cash and lived through disappointments and triumphs and are so at ease that you actually trade better than when you didn't have as much saved up... you're sort feeling like Mystikal -- you've been doing this [stuff] and [you're] highly trained how to use it. That's how these guys operate on a daily basis even if they don't deserve the company of those who make their tenures possible. Traders know what it is to get caught up in yourself and be addicted to the brain chemistry of success and the short term conviction you're locked on to something others may not see. In real life, the illusion of situational awareness is something that sends people to the other side every single day, even if that bliss is at the same time essential to getting out of bed in the morning. In the stock market it's more like an fps game with increasingly painful respawns that make for diminishing returns.
In this case, the illusion is made possible by the American tax payer and a world that wants desperately to stay in the black. Unless you're a flat out anarchist you don't want an economic implosion. In trading, arrogance often works and there is a kind hurricane eye that allows for short legs up the wall of worry. The president knows how to juggle and hustle but this is the big league; an arena he only thinks he understands. A president does not typically have to have a more than a loose grip in the big picture as he relies on others but this is not the case here. Emboldened by some strange fealty to the personality or perhaps to so much winning itself, the loyal cabinet members are relying on structure created by people whose value systems were ingrained before the post-war push for personal authenticity at any cost. Mistakes on the world stage can't be fixed by declaring bankruptcy. Well…at least not forever. Short term traders deal with this problem by never risking too much at one time but that is not always possible in the short political terms that push around geopolitics.
In the short term, the stock market technicals are ok but a revelation that allows for much higher prices is a signal that the US administration has got what they want...and they are very far from that, no? For now, the indices are still something to be managed with an eye to 2020. They could use a bit more margin here now, though, as this range is starting to get a bit stale for continued padding against aggressive moves in the trade war. They will continue to play around with the indices and the control mechanisms created by people with a bit less tolerance for risk.
I'm not discounting the power of those stabilizing forces to see us through with a bit of help from dumb luck, but merely noting that you can appear clever even when you're only exploiting the stability that would never have materialized if it were not for very careful people.
(20min delay)