Earnings Season Starts

Good Morning Traders,

As of this writing 4 AM EST, here’s what we see:

US Dollar: Mar. USD is Down at 101.780.

Energies: February Crude is Up at 51.99.

Financials: The Mar 30 year bond is Down 1 tick and trading at 152.22.

Indices: The March S&P 500 emini ES contract is 9 ticks Lower and trading at 2262.75.

Gold: The February gold contract is trading Up at 1185.00.  Gold is 1 tick Higher than its close.

Initial Conclusion

This is not a correlated market.  The dollar is Down- and crude is Up+  which is normal and the 30 year bond is trading Down-.  The Financials should always correlate with the US dollar such that if the dollar is lower then bonds should follow and vice-versa. The indices are Down- and Crude is trading Up+ which is correlated. Gold is trading Up which is correlated with the US dollar trading Up. I tend to believe that Gold has an inverse relationship with the US Dollar as when the US Dollar is down, Gold tends to rise in value and vice-versa. Think of it as a seesaw, when one is up the other should be down. I point this out to you to make you aware that when we don’t have a correlated market, it means something is wrong. As traders you need to be aware of this and proceed with your eyes wide open.

Asia traded mainly higher with the exception of the Shanghai and Nikkei exchanges which traded lower.  As of this writing Europe is trading mainly lower with the exception of the London exchange which is trading fractionally higher at this hour.

Possible Challenges To Traders Today

–  NFIB Small Business Index is out at 6 AM.  This is not major.

–  JOLTS Job Openings is out at 10 AM EST.  This is major.

–  Final Wholesale Inventories is out at 10 AM.  This is not major.

Treasuries

We’ve elected to switch gears a bit and show correlation between the 30 year bond (ZB) and The YM futures contract.  The YM contract is the DJIA and the purpose is to show reverse correlation between the two instruments.  Remember it’s liken to a seesaw, when up goes up the other should go down and vice versa.

Yesterday the ZB made it’s move at around 11:30 AM EST with with no real economic news in sight.  The ZB hit a low at around that time and the YM hit a high.  If you look at the charts below ZB gave a signal at around 11:30 AM EST and the YM was moving lower at the same time. Look at the charts below and you’ll see a pattern for both assets. ZB hit a low at around 11:30 AM EST and the YM hit a high.  These charts represent the newest version of Trend Following Trades and I’ve changed the timeframe to a 30 minute chart to display better.  This represented a long opportunity on the 30 year bond, as a trader you could have netted about 10 plus ticks per contract on this trade.  Each tick is worth $31.25.  We added a Donchian Channel to the charts to show the signals more clearly.

Charts Courtesy of Trend Following Trades built on a NinjaTrader platform.

 

Bias

Yesterday we gave the markets a neutral bias as both the Bonds and Gold were both trading higher and whereas the indices should have been trading lower, yesterday morning they weren’t.  As such we gave the markets a neutral bias which means they could go in any direction.  The Dow dropped 76 points, the S&P 8 but the Nasdaq gained 11.  Today we aren’t dealing with a correlated market and our bias is neutral.

Could this change? Of Course.  Remember anything can happen in a volatile market. 

Commentary

Yesterday we gave the markets a neutral bias and it seemed as though the Dow wanted to go higher early on in the session but couldn’t.  Instead it remained in negative territory all session long.  Today earnings season starts with Alcoa however it will be reported in the early AM hours as opposed to after hours as is the norm.  Depending upon the earnings itself it could be either very good for the session or not, but as usual only time will tell…