Daily Market Update -January 13, 2016 (7:30 AM) Yesterday looked like it might have ended up being just another in a series of disappointments that have so far characterized 2016. The futures started strongly, then weakened, but then rebounded and the trading session got off to a strong start only to reverse course to a fairly large loss by the late morning, The surprise is that with about 2 hours left to go in the trading session, the market turned around again. It did so in a nice fashion, too. While that happened twice last week, what didn’t happen was seeing any follow through on the following day and the week ended up with about a 6% loss to start the week. Today, the early futures are actually showing a small gain. It’s not much, but it’s better than the alternative that we’ve come to know so far this year. With some potential for nervousness over Iran’s cature of 2 small US Navy vessels and 10 US sailors yesterday, just days before about $100 Billion of their assets are unfrozen, there was certainly lots of potential for this morning to reflect lots of unease about what was going on in that part of the world. Considering how 2016 has so far been almost exclusively shaped by international events, it definitely would not have been surprising to have seen fear and uncertainty showing up in the futures market this morning. So far? Nothing. With 3 days left to the week, i can’t really envision buying anything else. My aspiration is to simply see some opportunity to generate some cash by being able to roll over anything from the list expiring this week. There are plenty of positions set to expire, but not necessarily plenty of opportunities. Hopefully, if those opportunities don’t come, there will at least be some surprise from earnings as those releases are going to start to speed up over the next 2 weeks. It wouldn’t take too much of a positive surprise to send markets up sharply, considering that no one is expecting anything good to happen over the next few weeks. I rarely give up hope and have to think that our current levels a lot of disappointment is already factored into those prices we’re seeing and that only further international uncertainty is going to really depress prices any further in a meaningful way. As with lots of cycles, the ability to hold your breath really helps. |