Mike Zigmont

FintekNews is pleased to launch our new feature “The Zigmont Report (Daily Market Recap)” today. We will publish this right after the market close, and each feature will appear the following morning on our M/W/F newsletter as well.

Mike Zigmont, author of the Zigmont Report, is a partner at New York-based Harvest Volatility Management, a hedge fund with over $10B 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 shortly after the market close.

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

Dead is an understatement. US equities were lifeless today. The premarkets were up in sympathy with a good day for Europe and our tape climbed further after the open. The highs for the day were at

10 AM

. At that point tech stocks rolled over and the rest of the tape followed. The S&P hovered around 2440 from lunch through the close and that was all there was to it.

Here are a few things worth mentioning:

  • May durable goods orders disappointed (-1.1% vs -0.6% est & -0.9% prior revised from -0.8%)
    • Softer data, for sure, favors the bears, but this data is spin-able. It didn’t change the narrative of things so, by definition, it didn’t matter.
  • Multiple Fed officials (including Yellen) will give speeches tomorrow
    • Hike expectations are currently out in December
  • Treasuries keep rallying
  • Bitcoin tanked today (lost about 15%)
    • Some view this as a canary in the coal mine for risk

Honestly these tidbits could just be interesting noise. Sentiment is going to drive the tape and regardless of how many datapoints one finds that shapes a new narrative, if the market doesn’t change its own narrative, the status quo remains.

So that’s that. Attitudes are stable and little bits of info aren’t changing things. This means we need big bits of data and/or policy to move the market.

Maybe the Fed speeches

tomorrow

do that. I don’t think so though but those are the likeliest candidate to be catalysts. Smart money says that nothing much changes this whole week though. See you

tomorrow

,

-Mike