Check out the daily chart if you think yesterday’s 212-point blast was somehow significant. Yet one more hump in the making? So it would seem. If there is anything interesting about the series of gratuitous ups and downs going back to late May, it is that the current rally seems so likely to be the up-slope of yet another. Then again, maybe not. Expectations can be dangerous in this game, the moreso if they verge on certitude. Contrarians can instantly see the challenge of second-guessing this particular move: Will it gut and disembowel those who go short just above mid-July’s peak? Or will the rally reverse so sharply from just below it that even the bears who thought they were ready will be caught with their pants down? For my part, I’ll continue to monitor impulse legs on the lesser charts so that I might better answer those questions and others. I’m also sticking with the minimum upside projection given here yesterday, 1378.25; or perhaps 1383.50 if any higher. Both numbers can be shorted aggressively with tight stops or via camouflage. _______ UPDATE: Shorting the higher target would have worked out beautifully, since, even if it had been stopped as tightly as 1.00 point, the trade would have held. On that basis, half the position needed to have been covered at 1380.50 on the 5-point pullback to 1378.00 that ensued. Subsequent chop created a marginal new high at 1385.00 and a close at 1382.50. Under the circumstances, there was little reason to take the position home over the weekend, since it would be subject to the depradations of the usual arse-bandits, broad-tossers, child-molesters, goniffs, coprophagists and thimble-riggers who pray on Sunday nights’ light-but-often-desperate traffic.
A stop-loss