Mike Zigmont

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

FYI I’m out

on Monday

, which is an abbreviated trading day where US stock trading closes at

1 PM

. Markets are closed

Tuesday

. Next Recap will be

Wednesday

. Trading blows. As expected, the bulls took charge today and pushed equity prices higher. Yesterday’s dip is today’s opportunity, according to the last 8 years of price history. The one wrinkle in the dip-buyers’ plan was a late-day selloff. It looks like sell-on-close was a popular order today and it pushed capital flow from a boring 90% (the projection at

3:40 PM

) to a respectable 99%. Anyway, setting the late-day shenanigans aside, here’s what the week’s trading history looks like.

There’s no smoking gun in this history. My takeaway is simply the down, up, down, up daily pattern that began

Tuesday

. We have a slugfest between the bulls and the bears. Why the two camps decided to start swinging with power this week is a mystery. Well whatever, they are duking it out now. I still think we need a major news event to allow one side to win the fight. I don’t think we’re about to get that major news event either. Unless a war breaks out, this weekend through

Tuesday

should be a snooze. The first earnings announcement for Q3, from YUM, comes out

on Wednesday

. YUM hasn’t tended to move the whole market and I don’t think that’ll change. Central banks probably won’t do or say much either. The ECB made their noises already (and shook up markets more than they wanted). The Reserve Bank of Australia announces on July 4th… but I doubt they will do anything major.

This leaves us looking towards macro data to shake things up and tilt the investment landscape in favor of the bulls or the bears.

The data of note shows up

Friday

, June nonfarm payrolls data (177k est vs 138k prior).

If you’ve paid attention to these numbers for the past couple years, they haven’t surprised much and so they haven’t moved the tape much.

So probably…. Next week is going to be a catalyst-lite week. I don’t think the tape will trend. I think we’re in for more back-and-forth. I wonder whether the magnitude of the swings will be as great as this week.

We shall see soon enough.

Have a great weekend and a great Fourth. See you

Wednesday

,

-Mike