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Daily Market Update – July 16, 2015 (Close) Yesterday was another one of those breather kind of days when you could have reasonably expected some fireworks. Instead, it was a boring day in which not even the first of 2 days of Janet Yellen’s Congressional Humphrey-Hawkins testimony could get markets excited. There were no inciteful moments, no great insights during the testimony and probably more of the same is expected today. While Greenspan always said whatever was on his mind and the market went wild in trying to decipher what he had said, often gyrating back and forth in magnitude with his words, Bernanke and now Yellen, are much more measured and thoughtful of their words. Both, still were able to move markets, but did and do so much less frequently, although both Bernanke and Yellen were more likely to move markets higher, rather than unpredictably, as did Greenspan. The only real excitement yesterday came in the final hour of trading as some attempts of rioting in the streets of Athens in advance of the Parliamentary vote on the proposed Greek debt relief proposal was about to get underway. It was in the final hour that market gains disappeared as maybe for a moment some doubt was cast as to the outcome of the scheduled vote, although most of the doubt was whether the vote would be able to take place and not its actual outcome. With pretty much everyone disavowing support of the proposed plan, even the person who has agreed to it and has to implement the increased austerity measures, ultimately the vote was as expected in favor of accepting the deal. That may have been the impetus for this morning’s moderately higher trading in the futures and certainly the lack of any bad news as the day progressed helped to create a very bene3volenty environment, especially as earnings news coming forth has not scared any one off. Otherwise, earnings continue and so far there is no over-riding theme casting negativity on the past quarter, nor more importantly on the quarter ahead. There are some important companies reporting earnings today, both before the opening bell and after the closing bell and then again tomorrow morning. They could at least get the market to be responsive to fundamentals for the time being as international events may begin to fade for now. With only a very small number of positions set to expire this week and with only one of those in a position for wither expiration or assignment, it’s going to be a quiet week right through until the end. With the market up strongly for the week, most of which came on Monday, there’s not too much reason to think that the week will see those gains evaporate, as the technical lows were decisively tested and only served as a springboard to begin approaching record highs. After yesterday’s failure to add to the string of higher moving days the market was still only 1.5% below its all time record highs and the pattern of the past 3 years has been fairly unequivocal. After today’s close we got even closer to those records, almost as if nothing had recently happened to have brought us to a 5% decline and at the precipice of testing a technical level of support. Hopefully that pattern of moving higher as a springboard to even greater heights will continue, even if it means not taking the opportunity to add to the roster of new positions. At this point I would prefer to see asset value go along for the ride higher and to be able to take whatever opportunity may present itself to add additional income through the sale of calls on uncovered positions. |
