SEE MY SHOCKED FACE

“Lower open? Wait … what?!”

Some day’s physics is a B. I. Itch isn’t it? I’m speaking, of course, of the warping of market space-time known as “gravity” … seems the stock indices this morning are going to find some … what with slow Asian & European sessions, seems the catalyst this morning, besides the fact it needs to “cool off”, are lower oil prices. “Imagine that … everybody in OPEC lies and cheats RE production & output! Damn, who would have thunk it? Throw in the Russians and other odd and assorted scoundrels, and you can’t trust anybody in the oil business, now can you”? “LUCY, DON’T YOU DARE MOVE THAT FOOTBALL”!

In any event, it’s a welcome relief to at least see some semblance of sanity, if only briefly by a scant few points, in world equity markets … the question for the day, though, is what happens after the lower open? Can the NDX100 cool off? Can the Dow30 get a second leg down after the open, or are we forever destined to “one & done” on the downside? It’s Friday, and after the recent runups, I’d expect some position squaring ahead of the weekend, which should mean some selling pressure at some point, and the sooner we get it after the open, the better for some long buying on the break. The only negative ‘wildcard” I see in this is crude oil … if the price freefalls again today after the NYMEX open, and yesterday’s $4 per barrel debacle on the downside, it could drag stocks lower into sell stops … who knows where that “feedback loop” ends. I have written about this before, but it bears repeating again today … nothing traded on earth doesn’t have a “Plunge Protection Team”; if it starts falling, do they show up?

Well, that escalated quickly; looks like the crude oil “Plunge Protection Team” [and hell yes, it does exist] is at work today, cuz we need to see stocks “green” at the open no matter what … can’t have crude oil spoiling the party. Here minutes before the open it’s a coin toss as to whether stocks open a little lower, UNCH, or even higher … seeing how it would be breaking the law to open lower, my money is on the Chipmunks [institutions who must buy at the open per the mutual funds rules] to ramp it higher in the first minute to five they got their fingers on the buy buttons … and well, there’s always the SNB too.

And of course, here at the open, nobody wants to see laws get broken, and Chipmunks being Chipmunks [who’ve never seen a stock price they didn’t like] and are buying like there’s no tomorrow on the 7^th straight day of higher prices, the Dow30 opens and immediately rallies up to almost a new high for the day … congrats Chipmunks; now the stage has been set for a move lower later this A.M. [Maybe … doubtful … but maybe] Remember, it’s the “setup” that matters … nothing else.

As I said yesterday, why even have a New York session? What’s the point? Two hours into this absolute mess of nothingness [and outside of crude oil nothing else is doing anything either], and aside from the usual lunacy around the open for a few minutes, the Dow30 has seen a 20 point range MAX, with most of the trade around a dozen points. NEWS FLASH: No signal means anything in this crap.

To be sure, the crude oil “Plunge Protection Team” has been hard at work supporting oil today, so as not to “spook” energy investors and … well, God forbid … see the Dow30 negative for the day more than 10 points, cuz the Dow30 is heavily weighted with energy. Yesterday’s oil news caught the trade long, and it isn’t until the selling is over that the PPT shows up and drives prices higher; and that happened this morning. Cuz in the world of central planning [a/k/a The Federal Reserve] the only mantra that counts is Stocks. Must. Not. Be. Allowed. To. Go. Lower. Ever.

Cuz if there ever was a day where this stuff should have seen a selloff below 21040 and into sell stops [may still happen today, but I doubt it.], this was it. And instead we get slop around the open. My advice to the central planners is simple; let this stuff correct on its own, cuz if you don’t you aren’t gonna like the result. But hey, these are the “smartest people in the room” … go ahead, just ask them … but, in reality they are Twits who 1) have never had a job outside government, and 2) solve problems in the faculty lounge where other enlightened Twits hang around … together it all seems so easy.

The market action since the beginning of 2017, the February melt up, the French election, the “Trump Dump” … if ever there was a clearer signal to the stock indices, I’ve never seen it … these markets are now clearly controlled and manipulated by the central planners, and stocks aren’t going to be allowed to go down … and I know many thought I was joking, but I wasn’t, cuz on the surface it sounds crazy, but I don’t think the SP500 is ever going below 2300 again, or the Dow30 below 20,000 …unless of course we get something like a nuclear war, or political assassinations that upset the applecart … central banks got all the money in the world with CNTRL-P, and they have “come out of the closet” in using it … who is going to stop them? Who is going to sell their bids? Who wants, yet again, to lose billions betting against them? I dunno, but it sure as hell ain’t going to be me.

The fact of the matter is, anybody who has tried selling this stuff on perceived “fun-durr-mentals” has gotten multiple arrows in the chest and/or burn marks all over themselves. “By all means, go ahead and sell it … let me know how selling into an unlimited bid amount works out for you … cuz pretty much all traders have given up selling this stuff cuz they’ve lost too much blood already … and with the bids sitting there, the index sits and doesn’t trade, and the result is what you see before you … a market that “lurches” when the bids are readjusted and that’s it”.

What you are witnessing is the destruction of free markets for corporate globalism … where in the eyes of the central planners everybody wins [well, at least the elites that matter] … where they have come to the conclusion that markets [FX, interest rates,, precious metals, crude oil & products, and of course equity markets] are all simply “policy tools”, too important to be left to thug trader types who don’t and/or can’t “see the light” of the enlightened … at the end of the day it boils down to GOVERNMENT AS RELIGION.

Of course, the hubris here among these Twits is “off the charts” … that smugness and air of invincibility at some point gets wiped off rather quickly when SHTF, but as they have learned simply blame others. What bothers me more than anything is that the financial media goes right along with this scam, and people who should know better buy into it with ease … all cuz the FED says, “Everything is F-ing Awesome Baby”! It’s truly sickening to me to see government sycophants in the markets.

And so, we can’t go up and we can’t go down; as Art Cashin’ infamously said a week or so ago, “It’s a waste of car money and a clean shirt”. At some point, of course, the market corrects some … will their hubris even prevent that from happening? Simply put, when you 1) have the will, and 2) have the CNTRL-P button to the mainframe computer to create money out of thin air, what’s to stop you from buying everything in sight to make sure there isn’t another down day in history? And as stupid as that sounds in pre 2016 markets, consider what the FED has learned from just one year ago.

Exactly 15-16 months ago, crude oil collapsed, taking prices down to the $25/ barrel area … and then the “magical” happened; in one day we went from $25 to $33 and it’s been up ever since [in both crude oil & equity indices]. Both the Dow30 & SP500 have large energy components, and the fluctuations in crude oil in January & February 2016 contributed to a very volatile stock indices markets. In today’s terms, that kind of volatility is “verboten” … the FED isn’t going to allow it. And so, the PPT crude oil version was born, and outside Brexit & the U.S. elections, oil has been very tame in relation to that time period.

That’s why today is a perfect example of the inter-connectedness of the manipulations; right before crude oil opened, we saw a big jump up and it was off to the races. This all happened about an hour before stocks opened; that gave stocks enough time to rally the futures off the low and prevent selling on the open. Cuz as we all know, stocks can’t be allowed to open lower and go lower. And as you can clearly see from today it’s “mission accomplished”. That’s why I said in an earlier blog, that FX is dead, gold is dead … they aren’t going to be allowed to do anything of substance unless they raise stock prices … cuz the mandate of the FED is clear, and that mandate is for the elites to see slowly rising equity prices with NO drops. And as we all know, when the Twits at the FED retire, where do they go? They go to their Overlord masters at Squid or JPM or some investment bank in Europe where the ECB has sprinkled “holy water” on them.

So far today, the SP500 has about a 2 – 2 ½ point range, while the Dow30 has about a 35 point range that was established in the first 15 minutes of the day when the Chipmunks did their thing; pathetic to be sure, but if you’re a FED member it’s a masterpiece on canvas … “simply behold our power & foresight Sheeple … we know what’s best for you, and don’t you forget it”! Welcome to the future … somebody explain to me how I’m wrong here, cuz I don’t see anything but evidence that I’m right. This entire week has been nothing but a no volume gap open higher from the “wee hours” to literally nothing during the New York day … rinse & repeat 5 times and that’s the week.

Obviously, there were no trades today … tough to trade when the market spends 90% of the day in a ±10 point range, with little bursts up/down to try and suck you into something you don’t want to do. Quite frankly, I don’t care what it does, but I can tell you the longer it has consecutive days higher, the worse it’s going to be when it corrects … that’s a fact. In any event, it is what it is, and I deal with it as it comes, but I can tell you I’m not buying this stuff unless we see some kind of weakness lower … you know, the kind we used to see pretty much every damn day but has now been declared “verboten” by the FED … so, I wait for our moments.

Well, I finally got the Microsoft Excel working, thanks to the efforts of tech rep Cherry Ann, who I might add was really good; way past my pay grade. She took control of my computer via a Microsoft link, and sitting here watching her whiz through files and protocols over about 15 minutes, she took care of everything and got it “ship shape”. Kudos to Microsoft for having her in tech support, and whatever it is they pay her, it isn’t enough.

With that said, the updated PAMM/MAMM Spreadsheet directly below.

Time for the beach … the dog and I are outta here … until Monday. I’ll be posting something Monday, probably in the late afternoon sometime; enjoy the Holiday.

Have a great weekend everybody!

-vegas

OUR TURNKEY FOREX  “PAMM/MAM”  IS NOW OPEN AND OPERATIONAL; SEE “PAMM/MAM MANAGED MONEY PROGRAM” IN “DOWNLOAD LINKS” SECTION IN RIGHT HAND COLUMN FOR DETAILS [VIEW ONLINE AND/OR DOWNLOAD] AND START YOUR JOURNEY FROM WHERE YOU ARE AT TO “ESCAPE TO SUCCESS”!