SPI Futures traded in a 49 point range last night, with a high of 7115, low of 7066, and a close of 7103, up 15 points, on volume of 18,131 contracts. She did a small range for the start of the night session, then took off at midnight (the usual time), with a 33 point green arrow, leaving gaps down at 7085, 7084, 7078 and 7074 (when the arrow formed) from last night. China stimulus hopes and US building permits at a 13 year high saw the SNP and NASDAQ post new record highs. Virus, what Virus ? DOW up .40 pct, SNP up .47 pct and Canada (resource driven) up .38 pct. VIX down 3.03 pct to 14.38. What goes up, must come down, so might be time to get prepared for the re-entry protocol. Have a nice day.
Today in 1962, John Glenn became the 1st American to orbit the Earth three times in just under five hours, aboard Friendship 7. There were eleven delays during the countdown due to equipment malfunctions and the weather, and during his first orbit, a failure of the automatic-control system was detected, forcing Glenn to operate in manual mode for the second and third orbits, and for re-entry. Later in the flight, telemetry indicated that the heat shield had loosened. If the reading had been accurate, Glenn and his spacecraft would have burned up on re-entry. After a lengthy discussion on how to deal with this problem, ground controllers decided that leaving the retrorocket pack in place might also help keep the loose heat shield in place. They relayed these instructions to Glenn, but did not tell him the heat shield was possibly loose; although confused at this order, he complied. The retrorocket pack broke up into large chunks of flaming debris which flew past the window of his capsule during re-entry. Yes traders, when strapped into a small spacecraft, anything can happen, and that re-entry can get pretty hot. To quote the man himself, "I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract."
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