Mike Zigmont Mike Zigmont, author of the Zigmont Report, is a partner at New York-based Harvest Volatility Management, a hedge fund with over $12B AUM, offering volatility management solutions to its investor base worldwide. Mike has been publishing his daily newsletter (Monday-Friday) privately for the firm’s investors and his personal contacts in the investment business

since 2008, sending it daily shortly after the market close.

The opinions expressed below are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Harvest Volatility Management, LLC.

Old habits die hard. We experienced another quiet day in the markets and the bulls did their usual thing. Overseas markets were down about 1% and our premarkets were down about half a percent in sympathy. That didn’t matter though because the dip-buyers took the weakness as a gift and marched equities higher over the day. The S&P opened down about 16 handles and rose to flat by

11:30 AM ET

. The tape climbed further until about

2 PM

and it flat-lined from there to the close.

It was quite an intraday turnaround. There’s no catalyst to explain it. Capital flow was elevated at 110%. Growth outperformed value today, with FANG leading the way.

It’s like a trading session from earlier in the year. Despite the recent signs of an equity market sentiment shift, the bulls are not going gently into that good night.

I don’t read too much into today’s action though. The bulls are still out there (which we knew) and they can still turn around a down morning (which is a little surprising up here) *

but

* all this is happening in the absence of news.

Tomorrow

we’ll learn the July nonfarm payrolls data (+192k est vs +213k prior). Even though it probably won’t surprise investors too much, it’s going to be a big piece of data for markets to digest. How we react in the face of those numbers will tell us more about the driving sentiment of the market than today’s news-lite action. See you

tomorrow

,

-Mike