SP 500 And NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Tension On The Tape - My 'Agenda'

‘The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
When the wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
‘Twas the witch of November come stealin.’

Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

This nautical map of eastern Lake Superior shows how close the Edmund Fitzgerald was to the safety of Whitefish Bay in the lee of the north wind when it foundered. It really was only about fifteen miles from safer waters.

Stocks were in an edgy trade today, as they continue to digest their outsized gains from the last month. The SP futures rallied, almost non-stop, from 1860 to 2110, where they failed, at least for now, to set a higher high.

The big questions are twofold.

First, are stocks and bonds being set up for a serious correction after a fairly impressive run higher in paper asset prices? And secondly, can the real economy continue to hold a weak pulse of recovery in the face of a much stronger dollar and increasing interest rates, even while the rest of the global economy continues to falter?

I do not have the answer to this, obviously. And hardly anyone else does as well, especially those who would sell their judgement on it to you. They might feel they have a good grasp of it, but the question then is why are they not putting their own money on it, rather than getting paid to watch you play yours on their opinion?

As the question arose elsewhere about this cafe, my ‘agenda’ here is to share my thoughts on the markets in the hopes of getting back more knowledge, and also to subject my thoughts to the rigor of the printed word. It is easy and rather sloppy just to think these things without committing them to paper, and public exposure.

The impedance of expressing thoughts in words gives them more substance, and also has the nice effect of introducing you to other peoples’ thoughts on similar subjects. Or just to find and converse with some very nice people who have the same interests. Yes, you run across some sour apples, but at the end of the day, you learn that they are just fighting with themselves, and are not yet ready to let it go, whatever it is that compels them to be miserable.