Quote from nonlinear5:
The yesterday's rally on the "immediate cut" rumor is now clearly a bogus one, since the rumor has not materialized in anything. I am not surprised that the market is holding up: the big long positions taken yesterday are "defended". My bet, however, is that these positions will be unloaded today or tomorrow, and we are going to touch (and likely to penetrate) 1490 on the S&P again. Accordingly, I am short ES from 1529.75.
Just because the fed didn't cut (YET) doesn't mean that the rally yesterday didn't occur for that reason. Look what happened when they cut the discount rate weeks ago, same exact pattern: Market was about to fall into the abyss intraday, the rumor came out, massive rally to flat at the close. Next morning they cut pre-open on OPEX and demolished the shorts. Three things had to happen for the move yesterday in lieu of all the negative news (ie. in contradiction to fundamental data coming out):
1. A rumor is released that for some reason is perceived to be true
2. A MASSIVE amount of index futures are bought at the market
3. Shorts are forced to cover, often by stop loss triggering.
I think we're on the same side - I was short too and am also quite bearish on most equities. However, I don't see how THIS bounce could have happened the way it did (and I'm not alone in that respect). Read the PPT article nevadan was so kind to have posted above - it has a lot of merit and the Fed/Treasury/Goldman is getting more and more bold with their market interventions. Here's one section from that article (
http://www.sprott.com/pdf/TheVisibleHand.pdf):
"While we cannot be certain what prompted the Plunge Protection Team story of February
23, 1997, John Crudele offered a persuasive explanation in August 1996. In an article
titled âSome Advice on How to Successfully Rig the Market,â he outlined steps that the Clinton administration should take if it intended to prop up the stock market. Among
his recommendations, Crudele suggested the following:
Leak a story to your favorite puppet newspaper about how the government
will âdo all in its power to prevent problems in the stock market.â
Thatâll work. Keep the statement vague and believable. And let the
gullible press carry the message for you"
How many times have we seen that exact message lately?