Global Equity Markets On Edge As Uncertainty & Volatility Spike

Talking Points:

S&P 500

On Friday, markets were struck with significant volatility when it was announced that President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to the FBI for previously lying about involvement with the Russians. This will certainly be on the market’s mind heading into next week, potentially putting a damper-effect on any news related to a Tax Bill proposal. As far as ‘high’ impact data releases are concerned, Tuesday we have ISM Non-Manufacturing/Services and on Friday the bigger data-set of the week in the November jobs report. The economy is expected to have added 198k jobs during last month. For release details, check out the economic calendar.

The S&P 500 (and Dow) was in ‘blow-off’ mode for most of the week. As we discussed on Friday, the market action got wild as we saw a large rise in the VIX on Thursday while the market was well up over 1% on the day. Very unusual activity, indeed, and smacked of price instability. It comes at a very interesting juncture given the overhead trend-lines we have on the intermediate to long-term time-frame. (For full details on this, check out Friday’s commentary.) Next week we expect price action to heat up as the push-pull between both sides of the market carries out, especially given Friday’s very volatile headline-driven session. It looks as though sellers could gain the upper hand in the days ahead as the market is overdue for a pullback and at the same time showing signs it wants to do just that. Looking to the 2600-vicinity as a source of sizable support. It would seem a consolidation at this juncture will be best case.