Thursday higher

The Hoot 
Actionable ideas for the busy trader delivered daily right up front

• Thursday higher, low confidence.
  
• ES pivot 1839.58.  Holding above is bullish.
• Friday bias uncertain technically.
• Monthly outlook: bias higher.
• ES Fantasy Trader standing aside

Recap

This is very odd.  It's feeling like the summer of 2011 or whenever it was with the Greek/European debt catastrophe all over again with wild opposite triple digit swings in the Dow every day - but this time the VIX isn't in the stratosphere, it's down in the dumps.  Huh?  I'm not gonna lie (why do people always tell you they're not going to lie - do you otherwise expect they would?), I've been at this for 10 years now and I don't remember another situation like we've got now.  I don't get it.  If someone can explain these market moves to me, I'm all ears.  Meanwhile, we'll just hit the charts again even though that doesn't seem to be very productive lately.

The technicals (daily)

The Dow: After retracing Tuesday's big dump on Wednesday, the Dow continued on higher on Thursday to put us right back in last week's congestion zone.  It's like this week never even happened.  But there were some technical effects.  We shot right out of the descending RTC for a bullish setup and we got a bullish stochastic crossover.  RSI is now off oversold so with two white soldiers this chart now officially looks bullish.

The VIX:  The VIX has been a bit squirrely lately too.  It ended Wednesday exactly unchanged on a tall hammer tacked on to the bottom of Tuesday's big drop.  That leaves the VIX right about at almost year-long support.  With the stochastic about to form a bullish crossover I'd be very surprised if the VIX had much more downside left to it at these levels.

Market index futures: Tonight all three futures are modestly higher  at 12:41 AM EST with ES up by 0.05%. ES is now in a new rising RTC and I'm impressed that it has the chops to continue higher at all after two days of decent gains.  In fact we're now above last months' record close of 1841 and the upper BB isn't til 1851.  And with two white soldiers and indicators not yet overbought, this chart looks continued bullish.

ES daily pivot: Tonight the pivot jumps from 1826.67  to 1839.58.  But we were so far above the old number that even with a flat overnight, we're still above the new pivot, so this remains bullish.

Dollar index: At least I can still get something right - last night I wrote "this chart is now looking mildly bullish.".  That proved to be something of an understatement as the dollar put in 2/3 of an evening star with a big gap-up inverted hammer that peaked at recent resistance just below its upper BB.  And yet it also caused a bullish stochastic crossover.  Thusly conflicted, we're not calling this chart tonight.

Euro: And I got the euro right too when I said last night "it's looking bearish for Wednesday."  The euro put in a big red candle to finish at 1.3599.  That was enough to get indicators off overbought, create a bearish stochastic crossover, and drop it out of its rising RTC for a bearish setup.  We are however seeing a 0.11% gain in the overnight but it's not clear how long that can hang on.  I'm going to guess it won't.

Transportation: After some yo-yo action the past three days, the trans resumed their march into record territory on Wednesday, hitting the upper BB in the process and moving the indicators overbought, moving right back into their rising RTC.  That all looks bullish to me and I don't yet see a reversal sign here.

Sentiment: Once again it's time for the latest weekly TickerSense Blogger Sentiment Poll.  We continue to track the poll to see how well it performs.

Wk.# Week   % Bullish  % Bearish  NightOwl Poll SPX  Accuracy Poll

 

  1  12/31      40         48        -      -   1402   0/1

  2  1/7        47         30        +      +   1466   1/2

  3  1/14       52         15        +      +   1472   2/3

  4  1/22       50         21        +      +   1486   3/4

  5  1/28       44         26        +      +   1503   4/5

  6  2/5        40         36        +      +   1513   5/6

  7  2/11       43         25        +      +   1518   6/7

  8  2/19       21         43        -      -   1520   6/8

  9  2/25       30         52        -      -   1516   6/9

 10  3/4        29         39        -      -   1518   6/10

 11  3/11       41         26        +      +   1551   7/11

 12  3/18       41         37        +      +   1561   8/12

 13  3/25       31         38        +      -   1557   8/13    9/13

 14  4/1        38         38        +      x   1569   9/14    9/13

 15  4/8        32         50        -      -   1553   9/15    9/14

 16  4/15       33         50        +      -   1589   10/16   9/15

 17  4/22       19         63        -      -   1555   10/17   9/16

 18  4/29       33         58        -      -   1582   10/18   9/17

 19  5/6        50         31        +      +   1614   11/19  10/18

 20  5/13       37         37        +      x   1634   12/20  10/18

 21  5/20       50         25        +      +   1667   12/21  10/19

 22  5/28       37         33        +      +   1650   12/22  10/20

 23  6/3        29         38        -      -   1631   13/23  11/21

 24  6/10       38         38        +      x   1643   13/24  11/21

 25  6/17       32         40        +      -   1627   14/25  11/22

 26  6/24       13         46        -      -   1592   14/26  11/23

 27  7/1        25         42        -      -   1606   14/27  11/24

 28  7/8        42         29        +      +   1632   15/28  12/25

 29  7/15       48         22        +      +   1680   16/29  13/26

 30  7/22       42         19        +      +   1692   16/30  13/27

 31  7/29       39         17        +      +   1692   16/31  13/28

 32  8/5        46         27        +      +   1710   16/32  13/29

 33  8/12       32         41        -      -   1691   17/33  14/30

 34  8/19       23         54        -      -   1656   17/34  14/31

 35  8/26       23         50        -      -   1664   17/35  14/32

 36  9/3        21         54        -      -   1633   17/36  14/33

 37  9/9        35         30        +      +   1655   18/37  15/34

  28 9/16       40         28        +      +   1688   19/38  16/35

 39 9/23        52         36        +      +   1710   20/39  17/36

 40 9/30        39         43        +      -   1692   21/40  17/37

 41 10/7        30         33        +      -   1691   22/41  17/38

 42 10/14       48         22        +      +   1703   23/42  18/39

 43 10/21       57         30        +      +   1745   24/43  19/40

 44 10/28       59         19        +      +   1760   25/44  20/41

 45 11/4        42         25        +      +   1762   26/45  21/42

 46 11/11       39         39        +      x   1771   27/46  21/42

 47 11/18       52         30        +      +   1798   27/47  21/43

 48 11/25       58         29        +      +   1805   28/48  22/44

 49 12/2        56         26        +      +   1806   29/49  23/45

 50 12/9        55         30        +      +   1805   30/50  24/46

 51 12/16       30         43        +      -   1775   31/51  24/47

 52 12/23       38         29        +      +   1818 

  2014

 01 12/30       50         23        +      +   1841

 02  1/6        40         44        +      -   1831 

 03  1/13       ??         ??        +      ?   1842

Again, the SPX number is the closing price of the S&P on the Friday before each new poll comes out.  The "NightOwl" column is how I voted.  The "Poll" column is how the majority of participants voted.  Since the poll is for 30 days out, after the first four weeks we're able to see how well we did.  This week we see that I voted bullish four weeks ago, but the majority of the poll voted bearish so I was right and they were wrong.  Therefore with just one week left to go, the Night Owl continues 2013 with an accuracy of 31 for 51, or 61%.   And the poll as a whole dropped a bit to 24 for 47 or 51%.   Next week we'll be able to fill in the last remaining blank for 2013 and come up with the final numbers for the year.

This week we see that Ticker Sense has not updated the poll, even though the week is almost over (I'm not sure what's up with that) , so I have no new numbers to report other than the fact that I personally voted bullish once again this week.  The last time I voted bearish was last September 3rd and for the life of me I'm still not seeing any reversal signs on either the weekly or monthly SPX charts.

Accuracy (daily calls):

Month    right  wrong  no call  conditional  batting   Dow
                                             average  points
January    1      5      4           0       0.167     -250

     And the winner is...

I almost hate to make any call anymore having been so wrong this month, but the technicals do look bullish to me tonight so for whatever that's worth I'm going waay out on the limb and calling Thursday higher.

ES Fantasy Trader

Portfolio stats:  the account continues the new year at $100,000 as we wait for the right moment to enter our first trade of 2014.