Short Term Trading Weekend Lounge: 30 Apr - 2 May, page-4

Happy Weekend traders and welcome to May, almost.   That is Sally - I think at Cascais, doing what she does best.  She is better than the pretty picture of iron ore that took second place.

Hey @golden6, good to see you on the weekly thread! Sorry I did not see your question during the week but was up late trying to trade that joint session address.  The president didn't go in deep on the tax details and the average take is that the administration is channeling FDR with a largess that will inevitably bend to the practical constraints.  I guess we're seeing an archetype of the altruistic statesman who knows his target audience.   During the address, I watched a different gallery of futures traders and they did not seem receptive.  That's down to ideology, though.  It is hard to parse trading and investing opinion because you don't always know the underlying bias, but I think most index futures traders are small government fans…you can imagine their ringside commentary during Wednesday's speech.  They don’t have to be in a vulnerable tax bracket themselves to be wary of fiscal spending.  That's their main thing and they don't seem to have any other axe to grind on the matter, as they trade the market no matter what it is doing.  As for the general public’s response, I will have to have a look at the polls.  Viewership was apparently much less than that of the last administration’s first address.  But I suppose that could be like the phenomenon with horror movies and train wrecks.  As for vaccine rollout, something that also matters to investors and traders, yeah they seem to be doing that right -- even if they didn't really have a hard act to follow.  

This week the vibe seems to be (take my take lightly) a mixture of sentiment regarding the bigger picture.  The chatter was not very bearish, but I believe there was more dissonance than usual this week.  Talk mostly revolved around short term prospects for a run to SPX 4300 when everything seems to be priced to perfection.   I stuck to responsive, purely technical trading as we wait for more information about how we are going to handle May and the next derivatives expiration.   I would say caution is the go for swing traders and the daytime timeframe players will try to take advantage of things until we know more.