Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Evening Read

Good evening, folks.
"You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
- Bob Dylan

Here's a quick recap of the trading session today: S&P 500 traded 9.13 handles higher to settle at a new all-time high of 1,854; the DOW picked up 74 to 16,272; and the Nasdaq added 26 to 4,318. A somewhat positive sign is that we closed right near the highs of the day, so one could reasonably expect some follow-through tomorrow. Unless, of course, Russia does something stupid.

Traders are clearly concerned about this rally. A quick look at the CBOE Market Volatility Index (the "VIX" or "fear gauge") shows that volatility has been trading between 14 and 15.5 during the S&P's march higher into new chart territory. Compare that to trading ranges of between 12 and 13.5 for the last couple of attempts at resistance in January and late October/early November.

This is by no means predictive - the VIX was rather complacent in January (before the emerging market hiccup) and completely failed to price in risk.

Allow a young (but rapidly becoming old) man to prognosticate: there is going to be a lot of "sorry we're late" liquidity come to the market if we do not see a more significant pullback over the next couple of weeks. I am not going to go out there and trade on this thought, but the more I hear people try to debunk this rally the more I think it has legs.

The VIX looks a little pricey to me.

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