Wednesday, October 15, 2014

V Bottom?

So now we got the monster V bottom intraday today, is it the all clear to get long and strong for the move back to all time highs?  As I have mentioned earlier, this Ebola scare is a big time red herring, making those contrarians feel comfortable buying here because of course, market shouldn't be down so big on such news.

But what is making me cautious is that we went down in a straight line 150 SPX points in a week, if you count the intraday high after the Fed minutes last Wednesday at ES 1964, and the low intraday today at ES 1813.  And really there was no significant reason for it.  I heard global growth scare, bad European data, end of QE, and Ebola.  But perhaps most concerning is that with high yield bonds acting very weak this month, and corporate yield spreads rising, the borrow to spend on stock buyback plans will be more difficult and expensive to execute.  That has been a lynch pin for this stock market rally.

And really, the Fed is on the sideline here for a while, because they look like complete market slaves if they suddenly panic and restart QE because the stock market is going down.  So no emergency Fed plans until things get even worse.  And this market has been reliant on the Fed to bail it out for every stock market swoon since Greenspan panic lowered interest rates in October 1998.

BTW, in the post cash close trading in futures, ES went down 11 points in 15 minutes, and VIX futures went up from 21.8 to 23.9 in the same 15 minutes, from 4:00 PM ET to 4:15 PM ET.  That is an insane move, and not a sign of a bottom.  We are on day 18 of the pullback.  Remember, many of these long pullbacks last 22 trading days, or about 1 full month of trading.  We still have another few days to go.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually why does market bottom coincide with option expiration? Thx

Market Owl said...

A lot of options expire this Friday, although weekly options are used too, the main options are monthly. Most of the volume is in the main monthly options. The delta hedging that takes place as the market goes down make put positions bigger in size as the market goes down, making put sellers lose more money as their position size gets bigger. It is similar to a short squeeze.

Anonymous said...

Thx. I have a wild imagination. If SPX continues to decline 2% today and tomorrow, then it will be getting similar to the trend prior to Black Mon 1987...

Any thoughts?

Market Owl said...

Anything is possible. It does look like a setup for a crash anytime.