Oversold Conditions Stretch At the Edge of the Year’s Lows – The Market Breadth

stretch (credit: Lynn Friedman on Flickr)

Stock Market Commentary: Extreme trading behavior finally appeared right after I insisted the stock market looked uninteresting despite dropping into oversold conditions. Oversold conditions did a stretch toward the year’s lows and created enough concern to finally send the volatility index soaring. Looming over the trading action all day was a collapse in the British … Read more

How Much Longer Can the Market Avoid An Extended Oversold Period? – The Market Breadth

Stock Market Commentary: Despite recent bouts of trading in or like a bear market, market breadth has somehow managed to avoid closing in oversold conditions. In fact, the last “official” oversold period was 518 trading days ago. Yet, since the NASDAQ topped out in November, market breadth has dropped into and out of oversold on … Read more

The British Pound Attempts to Break Quarantine

The British pound has experienced a lot of fireworks this month, but the currency remains in an uptrend against the U.S. dollar (GBP/USD). I stayed focused on this uptrend when I insisted on trading contrary to the screaming headlines about the UK getting the quarantine treatment from the rest of Europe. The rebound unfolded a … Read more

More Virulent Strain Threatens to Dampen Market Cheer for U.S. Pandemic Relief

Conditions rapidly changed since my last Above the 40 post describing the historic territory for overbought conditions. Bad and good news headlines are battling for mindspace where a new more virulent strain of coronavirus threatens to undercut what could have been market cheer from the new pandemic relief in the U.S. Distress from a New … Read more

Central Bank Unease: Fed Caps Week of Emergency Actions As Markets Panic

In an earlier post on Sunday, I provided reasons to believe that the market was finally drawing a line in the sand for a sustainable bottom. With anticipation, I pronounced I would go on a shopping spreed down to S&P 500 (SPY) 2600. At the time of writing, it looks like I may have to … Read more

British Pound: From Organized Chaos to Orderly Selling

The freefall in the British pound is even more clear in the GBP/JPY pair.

Three months ago, I wrote about the “organized chaos” in the British pound (FXB). I described an organized process of GBP/USD bouncing off and pivoting around key moving averages with the occasional sharp interruption of Brexit-related trades. Ironically, the sharp Brexit-related rally that sparked that post looks now like the British pound’s last gasp for … Read more

Forex Critical – The British Pound Moves On: Out With May, In With Hope

Tears In May Three weeks ago, I wrote about my skepticism about the strength of the British pound (FXB) in the wake of a resounding political defeat for the Conservatives. Brexit-related moves in the pound have proven fleeting and this time was no different. The pound peaked right after that post, but the persistent nature … Read more

Forex Critical: The Organized Chaos of the British Pound

Chaos After the divided politicians of the United Kingdom managed to postpone Brexit to October 31, 2019 from March 29, 2019, I assumed the British pound (FXB) would take a break from wild and sudden gyrations. I was wrong. On Thursday, local elections plunged the Conservative party (the Tories) into a resounding defeat that most … Read more

British Pound Hits A Post-Brexit Support In the Wake of Monetary Swirl

When U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin helped send the dollar careening with commentary welcoming a weak dollar, the British pound (FXB) surged enough against the then hapless U.S. dollar to make me speculate on GBP/USD reaching a blow-off top. GBP/USD did indeed pull back from that point, albeit in very choppy fashion, for almost a … Read more

The British Pound and Mark Carney: Lots of Noise and Little Action

The following chart reminds me that except for one post-Brexit emergency rate cut and its rapid reversal once the cut turned out to be unnecessary, the Bank of England (BoE) has done nothing with interest rates in the 9 years since the financial crisis. Source: Bank of England During an interview with the BBC on … Read more