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 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.
Crickets chirping. Boy was today a slow one. Overseas markets opened the week without much fanfare and our markets did the same. Capital flow today was extremely light at 86% and the intraday range for the S&P was about 10 handles (40 bips). That’s a 3-ish percentile ranking. Headlines were unremarkable today and investors globally seem to be taking a collective 3-day weekend.
It’s probable that bulls have been the investors-of-note for the entire month and that they are taking a break for the last week in June. The S&P is up 7-plus percent already and it’s the best June for the S&P since 1955. The sell-in-May crowd looked pretty smart last month but my how the tables have turned. Before we get too crazy about June’s rally, let’s just remember that Jan was a +7.9% month.
Anyway, the point is that with the newswires being so quiet and the bulls essentially having controlled the tape for the last 3 weeks, it’s very understandable that the tape would be exceptionally calm.
There’s no news catalyst to force capital into motion, the bears aren’t about to put their snouts into the trap again, and the bulls need time to figure out how and when to do what they love to do… and even they may be thinking about harvesting profits this week.