From Monday's missive (10/20, "Potpourri"):
"Some variety of market top occurring during an expiration week has
some possibilities. Something of a pressure point also exits coming out of
last week regarding short-term rates of change."
Last week's highs were put in during intraday trading on Wednesday
(10/15). From those respective highs through last Friday's close, the tracking
group registered respective average and median declines of 1.9% and 1.5%.
Through trading yesterday, last week's closing highs as well as the intraday
highs of 10/15 remained intact. Thus, if something of import did take place last
week, it has not been proved -- or disproved -- during this week's first
couple days.
----------------------------------------
SELECTED STOCK-MARKET MEASURES
(Listed Alphabetically)
----------------------------------------
Last Clos-
ing High
----------- 10/15 10/20 10/21
Value Date High High High
----------------------------------------
DJIA 9813 10/14 9850 9778 9784
NAS 100 1425 10/16 1440 1409 1429
NYSE Comp. 5960 10/14 5970 5931 5950
Russ. 2000 532 10/14 534 523 526
S&P 500 1050 10/16 1054 1045 1049
Val. Line 342 10/14 344 338 340
Wil. 5000 10211 10/14 10252 10140 10186
----------------------------------------
Any and all pullbacks will be heralded by the CNBC crowd as a
"healthy." Of course, something that turns out to be less healthy will commence in
the same manner.
As to the "wall of worry" shtick, the VIX closed at a new 52-week low
yesterday -- 16.55, having traded at an even lower 16.19 during the session.
CBOE put/call ratios for the day were on the optimistic side, too --
respective 0.70 and 0.59 readings for all products and for equity options.
Gold/XAU
With yesterday's renewed weakness in the dollar, physical gold and
gold stocks responded with a solid performance. Gold's Comex spot-month
contract popped eight dollars -- 2.1%, while the XAU rose 4.53 points or 4.9%. The
XAU's close of 96.65 left it a mere 1.84 points or 1.9% below the 52-week high.
God help the "commercials" when (not "if") physical soundly takes out
the upper 380s!
| 