I was only half-kidding in the Rick’s Picks chat room when I raised the possibility that Tuesday’s fleeting high could prove to be the last gasp of the bull market begun in 2009.  If so, considering the egregious financial excesses that produced it, our children, their children and even their children’s children might not live to see it exceeded. One reason I suspect it could be a top of at least intermediate importance is that the E-Mini S&Ps came within two points of achieving an important rally target at 1962.50 that I’d ‘whispered’ in that chat room a while back so as not to jinx it.

Naturally, I was waiting to squeeze the last millimeter of upside from the move before shorting it, and so the decline from just shy of the target caught me with my pants down and shoes untied. Caught more than a few others, too, judging from the punitive slope of the selloff that ensued.  We’ll know first thing Wednesday morning how hard bulls have prayed overnight for a bounce that they can sell, since, if there’s a God, there’s no prayer He so delights in ignoring as that one. Technically speaking, and as someone noted in the chat room, when stocks rally above the previous day’s high and then close beneath that day’s low, it usually means the downtrend will continue for at least a few days. Janet Yellen could conceivably say something to change the outcome, but our view is that the economic world would be much better off if everyone simply tuned her out — better yet, drove a stake through her heart.