Do we have a bottom?

It would be nice and tidy if this morning’s 1036 print on ES turned out to be the low for a couple of weeks or even a month or two. Stock indexes made a price extreme unaccompanied by new highs in the VIX or yen or new lows in the euro, pound, copper, silver, gold and many bellweather stocks. The later rally was fast, furious and broad.

Here’s how this week in ES looks to me in the scheme of things. A right shoulder would be beautiful here:

TD Ameritrade

To re-iterate, I’m a huge bear for the 6-18 month horizon (my SPX target is an indecent number well under last year’s lows). I’m bullish for the 1-6 week horizon — I anticipate scaling back into a heavy short position in stocks, copper and oil on any rally here.

Loaded for bear

Graphite here.

Although it’s easy for this kind of contrarianism to turn into unhelpful navel gazing, on Friday the level of despondency seemed to hit a new high (or is it low?) on the bear blogs. Posts and message boards are chock full of buzz about perpetual asset inflation powered by the Fed’s magical money machine and an ample supply of that tricky thing called “liquidity.” Visions of the 1990s and 2000s are offered as proof that the market can disconnect itself from any fundamental or technical backdrop and power to endless new highs. The January highs are trotted out as “points of no return” for the bears, as though the market is guaranteed to launch higher if it manages to cross that threshold. And with the market seeming to shrug off every negative news item from sovereign defaults to bank failures to continued hemorrhaging of jobs in the U.S., traders are unable to conceive of a “trigger” that could send stocks lower.

Meanwhile, take a step back and look at the technical picture the market is presenting at the moment. After a several-week buying frenzy in stocks, we have new highs in the high-beta Nasdaq and Russell indices, unconfirmed (so far) by the Dow and S&P. Friday’s 5:1 NYSE a/d ratio was cause for concern, but hardly a match for the 35:1 down day seen in the February selloff. The 17 handle on the VIX shows complacency in the option market. Bonds and the dollar remain very well bid, despite the imminent end to Fed purchases and the best efforts of politicians to dismiss the euro’s and pound’s woes as the unnecessary manipulation of nefarious speculators. After a period of sideways movement the currency DSI sentiment has backed off somewhat from its recent extremes. Sterling in particular seems to have taken over whipping boy duties from the euro for the moment, and may have just finished a failed breakout from a channel on the 1-month chart. I have entered a short position with a stop above the upper channel line:

Source: Interactive Brokers

If it tops here, crude oil will have put in a right shoulder on a ponderous 6-month H&S formation. A close today below 81.79 in the April contract would also create a bearish outside reversal bar (not shown):

Source: Interactive Brokers

Over the weekend Marketwatch ran a segment prominently touting “The Year of the Bull,” complete with an upward sloping line starting from March 1, 2009.

If immediate new highs are in store for the major indices I would expect them to be muted at best, following Friday’s buying frenzy and the outpouring of bullish sentiment and resignation from the bears. If all the indices turn and fail right here I would think we will put in a stronger, swifter leg to the downside than we saw in January. And with entries in various markets offering tight, well-defined stops at multi-week highs, risk/reward favors the battered bears for now.

This is it: we have a major top this week.

Frequent readers know that I watch sentiment and put a lot of stock in Investor’s Intelligence and Daily Sentiment Index surveys, and that when extremes in sentiment match with extremes in price, it is as good a trade as the market ever provides. Well, we have 3% dollar bulls today. The dollar is going to blast off from here and kill the stock and commodity rally and blow credit spreads wide open. It also appears that emerging market (including Chinese) stocks have already started stair-stepping lower.

The dollar vs. the euro, pound, Aussie and Loonie — a loaded springboard:

Chart from Yahoo!

I see three clear waves up from March in stocks and commodities (three is what you need for a complete countertrend move), with big B-wave moves down in the dollar and bonds, which now have the potential to blow right through their highs from last winter’s deflation trade. In stocks and commodities, the sell-off into early July was the b-wave (of 2 of C), where the hobby bears jumped in, and the rally since has crushed all but the most disciplined, patient and deep-pocketed shorts. On the cusp of the big 3rd wave down, this is definitely not the time to lose religion.

Commodities’ last gasp (indexes here):

Credit: Bloomberg.

Watch for VIX liftoff as well to add extra oomph to put portfolios.

Yahoo!

I’m sitting on puts on oil, silver, stocks, the euro and pound and calls on Treasuries. There are no guarantees in the market, so anything could happen, but I’ve never felt better being short (my puts are comfortably long-dated, of course). A sharp pullback might set us up for new highs, though I doubt it. I’m expecting a typical rollover at first, with increasingly jagged price movements (remember when almost every day saw 3% swings?), but not necessarily full-on crash conditions for several weeks to months.

Don’t trade like me (I’m a wild man), and good luck out there.

Addendum:

Here’s the much mentioned analogue to the ’29-’30 post-crash rally (image from D. Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff — sign up for his free letters here):

Holding dollars, profits taken on bonds

That was one heck of a reversal in bonds today off a beautiful double bottom Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s TLT:

The move was so extreme for bond-land that I sold all of my June 90 calls bought under 91, though I’m holding my unlevered TLT.

The dollar extended its decline, though it is looking every bit like the terminal stages of a panic. Just look at the spike tops being formed in the Euro, Pound and silver. I’m also eying crude suspiciously, though the rally has not quite formed a spike.

Dollar kicks butt again.

The dollar carry-trade continues to unwind. The days of getting rich by borrowing dollars and buying anything under the sun are over. So much of that dollar debt is going to money heaven, so if you still have dollars you can get a lot more for them:

Gold fell $93 intraday:

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The dollar was way up against the Euro (5-day view):

Source: Yahoo! Finance. Click image for larger view.

And the Loonie:

Source: Yahoo! Finance. Click image for larger view.

The Pound:

Source: Yahoo! Finance. Click image for larger view.

The Rogers Commodity Index:

Source: Yahoo! Finance. Click image for larger view.

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And last but not least, you can now get a lot more Dow for your dollar:

Source: Yahoo! Finance. Click image for larger view.