NYSE + Nasdaq Combined

Based on that attempt to put in a tradable bottom last week I closed out gold sector shorts I’d been nursing for a couple of weeks. Since then have mostly remained in cash except for building yesterday and today a natural gas short position (sell the weather news, also keen to avoid anything that moves with or against the dollar and NG seems the least correlated at present).

Today marks the first follow up day where we’ve seen an extremely high ratio of advancers to decliners – over 4:1 all day. This is, in an uptrend, typical of a “launch” day which would normally be followed by up and up and up.

The market isn’t in an uptrend at this present, even if the major indexes do not present what I would consider to be a classical reversal question. However key sectors have rolled over and are trading below their uppermost trading range – what was once trending up, then sideways, is now poised to trend down or in the case of some sectors (financials for example, cement, others) has already printed lower swing lows and highs.

Given that situation, it is probably more useful to regard today and any further up days not accompanied by increasing advancer momentum, as a selling opportunity than a buying opportunity.

Maybe the EU folks will save the world, for at least the next week, but there is more to this than Greece so ultimately I expect to see a deeper correction than we’ve seen so far based on the macro backdrop.

Intraday that same adv/dec of issues and volume picture deteriorated meaningfully mid-day, then improved as rumours of the EU re-circled, and has since weakened but remained elevated even as those rumours have been brushed aside somewhat. Clearly the right sort of statement out of the EU could give markets a pop but I wonder if anything they could say will be a sell the news event now. After climbing far more than one percent off the lows in under an hour, the EURUSD cross sold off half a percent in just a couple of minutes, probably as the EU support rumour deflated.

The huge intraday currency swings are not, in my mind, a sign that markets are ready for stability or appreciation anytime soon.

Possibly both UBS and Raymond James will be correct on this one.