Caution

S&P500 daily at end of day

End of Day Update:

Today was one of those days that make you stand up and take notice. The ECB surprised everyone with their unexpected rate cut, but rather than rally on all the free money, US stocks sold off from early gains. When markets selloff on good news, watch out!

There are always two ways of looking at things. Until this point, quantitative easing was seen as a good thing and our markets are up huge since the US Fed started the program a couple of years ago. But there are two sides to every story and it seems the market is taking the contrarian view with the ECB rate cuts. Rather than embrace the easy money, the market became concerned this unexpectedly aggressive action is required to keep Europe from falling apart. The means market is starting to reconsider how little risk premium it is currently carrying at these record levels.

Markets frequently overdo things on both the upside and downside. This rally defied all the naysayers over the last two years, but every good thing must come to an end. Are we there yet? If the market continues to struggle  in the face of normally good news, that is a strong warning to us.

Friday morning we have US non-farm payroll.  I expect a respectable number and a modest bounce in equities, but if the market fails to gain traction and recover Thursday’s weakness, we could see more selling in the near-term. The best trade over the last two years has been buying every dip, but failing to hold the 50dma so soon after reclaiming it shows many investors are no longer throwing money at this market and we could be in the early stages of a larger correction. Continued weakness on Friday gives us an interesting shorting opportunity, but brushing off Thursday’s weakness and closing strong shows the market is ready to continue higher.

Jani