How War is Waged Through Finance (Or The Politics of Crude Oil)

The market tends go where the least amount of participant expects it. And of course in mid-2014 crude oil started slipping just around the time when the talking heads of CNBC and Bloomberg were spouting their year end targets of $200/barrel. In the course of a year and half,...

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How are US Treasury Bonds and the Dollar Correlated?

I have the pleasure of working with many talented traders within the Chicago Board of Trade. Among them is my mentor, a former market maker in the US Treasury pit. Earlier this year, we were preparing for an US GDP report release and I asked him, "Hey, how exactly are US Treasury...

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In a Perfect World

One cannot simultaneously be a trader and a market ideologue. Of course, we all have our biases about how the markets "should" behave but that's in a perfect world. We aren't in that world. I personally would have liked to see more consolidation and level testing in the S&P...

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Catching a Falling Knife

It looks like volatility is back. The S&P500 traded within a 19-point range today, seeing highs near 1977 and lows near 1958. The day closed just south of 1965 to finish in the red. A linear channel shows a downward drift in $SPX If you believe that the trend is your...

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Summer Into Fall

The S&P500 closed just south of 1978 today after trading within a 15-point range. We saw a strong late-day 10-point rally which nearly drove the index positive for the day. Supports and resistance in $SPX Where are we headed from here? Let's take a look at some historical...

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So What Now?

The fat lady finally sang last Friday when $BABA was unleashed onto NYSE. Shares rose as high as 33%, pushing up the S&P500 to an all-time high near 2020 and the Nasdaq to a post-2001 high of 4580. Some big players took this opportunity to take some handsome profits: Current...

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All Quiet on the Western Front

Today was the 5th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the markets were all quiet on the Western front. Today's front page of Google Finance A quick glance at Google Finance's front page showed lackadaisical sideways action in the US indexes interjected with...

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