Market Review
Trade Date March 15, 2021
Economic Calendar
Closing Prices
In the Tradechat Room
MiM & SpyGate
The MOC was a decent 1.3B to sell but the market took off in an unstable stampede into the close. Spygate was there to capture the buy programs all the way up and to keep traders from making the mistake of going short.
It had been a very light day in the program trading world with just 38 trades detected but those were all at the end of the day. An upside waterfall like yesterday’s close doesn’t happen too often but that 20-point run sure felt like 100.
Spygate is now part of the MIM trading groups data.
Questions? Please email me: Marlin@mrtopstep.com
Get the skinny when we get it: Join the MiM.
Covid Corner:
Looking at progress in vaccine programs, Chile is now the leading vaccinator administrating 1.5% of the country every day. That passes the slow progress the US is making which was at 0.6% last week and has grown to 0.73%.
The US has now vaccinated 21% of its population, well behind the UK’s 36% after the UK opted for giving as many first jabs as possible while the US holds 2nd jabs in reserve.
Looking at a graph version of the above data you can see that the US rate is fairly linear, this is a curve that needs to bend upward. Italy and Germany are starting to bend.
The goal is fully vaccinated and Israel now has half of the country fully vaccinated with the US now above 11%
There is new data coming in from Israel that gives us hope that we can return to a more normal normal. Israel is beginning to open up with the use of vaccine cards as passports. I am not sure that will fly in the US, the link below is an article about the latest Israel data.
Wear your masks!
Stay at least 10 feet behind someone wearing a mask! (Particularly in a checkout line)
Stay home!
Take your Vitamin D!
Chart of the Day
Americans’ wealth is more at the mercy of share-price swings than ever before as a bull market unfolds, according to one barometer. Stocks and mutual funds accounted for a combined 34.4% of U.S. households’ financial assets at the end of last year, according to data released Thursday by the Federal Reserve. The percentage was the highest since the quarterly figures were first compiled in 1946. The record was highlighed by Paban Raj Pandey, editor of the financial blog Hedgopia, in a Twitter post Friday.
Our View
S&P 500 New All Time Highs
The S&P 500 futures (ESM21:CME) rallied hard on Friday’s close, pulled back to 3919 on Globex Sunday night, opened higher Monday morning, sold off and retested the Globex low and just after 2:00 ET traded up to 3952 area, 29 points off the low or up 0.25%. I believe the rally was three things; an extension of Friday’s big late-day rally, extremely low volume, and the February mid-month rebalance. At 2:34 the ES traded 3958, pulled back as the MIM showed over $1 billion to sell, and then rallied up to a new all-time high at 3965.76 at 4:03 ET. The ES settled at 3966.50, up +0.60% on the day.
In terms of the ES’s overall price action, the Dow and S&P acted firmly. While the Nasdaq may have outpaced the two, it also declined more during the most recent ‘correction’. My feeling is that the growing economy and the liquidity provided by the $1.9 trillion Covid19 stimulus package will be the main drivers of the next leg up in the stock market.
Our view, it’s hard getting real bullish after a big run-up. That all said, yesterday’s price action fit the pattern: sell-off after the open, make a mid-morning low, and rally. I am not saying you can’t sell a gap up open and buy the pullbacks but I have a hard time getting out of the short and flipping to the long side in the same sequence of trades. Our lean is to buy the 10- to 20-handle pullbacks above 3770, the ES has a clear shot at 4000.00 to 4010.00. The headline that France, Italy, and Germany are going to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine did two things, the first was the sell-off and then the second was the rally back to new highs.
Danny Riley is a 39-year veteran of the CME trading floor. He ran one of the largest S&P desks on the floor of the CME Group since 1985.
As always, please use protective buy and sell stops when trading futures and options.
Disclaimer: Trading Futures, Options on Futures, and retail off-exchange foreign currency transactions involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. You should carefully consider whether trading is suitable for you in light of your circumstances, knowledge, and financial resources. Decisions to purchase or sell as a result of the opinions expressed in the forum will be the full responsibility of the person(s) authorizing such transaction(s). BE ADVISED TO ALWAYS USE PROTECTIVE STOP LOSSES AND ALLOW FOR SLIPPAGE TO MANAGE YOUR TRADE(S) AS AN INVESTOR COULD LOSE ALL OR MORE THAN THEIR INITIAL INVESTMENT. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS
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