Thursday, 17 July 2014

Market Commentary: Have Short Term Traders Shown Their Hand with the Recent Selloff?

Most traders who are bearish on markets at the moment have had a hard time of late. As world and more significantly U.S indices creep up slowly to all new time highs, the bears look to have come out of hibernation prematurely. 

However last week it was reported that the Portuguese bank, Banco Espirito Santo  had failed to repay short term debt it had made and sent traders into a frenzy leading  the market downwards for what was thought to be a start of a deeper correction.

Nevertheless the market decided otherwise and seemingly reversed its direction and now heading back towards all-time high which begs the question, is there any rationality in the markets? 

What the recent selloff might suggest to us is that traders and investors alike are waiting for the right catalyst to initiate a departure from overpriced stocks and trap in the value they have created over the last bull rally, allowing for better valuations to come through.

It is uncertain what the catalyst may be but we know that participants may start reviving negative themes from the past and make them appear as new issues.  I say this with reason because European debt problems have never gone away, it has been floating in the back of our minds while markets continuously soar to new levels.

The U.S economy remains weak when compared to the amount of stimulus financial markets have received over the last few years, yet it doesn’t seem as if the world economy is in a better place today than what it was a year ago.

If the selloff last week could teach us something it’s that participants are more willing to press the sell button in a gasp of panic than they are to euphorically buy up more stock.  The lack of volatility over recent months has resulted in sideway choppy price action which has made trading extremely difficult.

 Price action to the upside isn’t producing the desired conviction it once did a few months ago with the moves gradually moving higher with a stop start pace about them which in turn is making it very difficult to see any technical formations on the higher timeframe charts.

Taking this into account one could assume that the markets at present is bouncing around in a non-directional manner as a result of many refusing to buy in at lofty levels, added together with news events which lack enough substance to drawdown the market sufficient enough to validate the start of a corrective phase.

 Current market conditions may only resolve itself if enough time is allowed to lapse so volatility may return. We have seen a spike in volatility on the shorter timeframes but longer timeframes still seem to be stuck in low volatility environments and we would need to see a build-up of it before we get excited.

 I also believe that when we do begin to see increasing volatility again it will be violent and abrupt so as to shake out misplaced views on the market.  Until then the best way to deal with it is to take it day by day.  Stay attentive of the news flows coming out, watch for any abnormal price action which breaks through major supports and lastly guard your capital as if your life depended on it.


If you would like to contact me you can through my email at cadetrader@gmail.com or if you wish to follow me on twitter and get the latest updates of news, interesting commentary and general trends in the market, my twitter handle is @CadeTradeR if you follow this link it’ll take you directly to my twitter timeline: https://twitter.com/CadeTradeR

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