All signs pointed higher when the music stopped on Friday ahead of the three-day holiday weekend. How much higher is the question, since the futures have been vamping for more than a month, unable to move either way. If buyers on Tuesday achieve the 2277.00 target shown (see inset) — a coin-toss bet, as far as I’m concerned — that would merely tie the record print achieved on Friday, January 6. It’s obvious that DaBoyz are waiting for some morsel of news they could seize on to trigger a binge of short-covering. Of course, that is the only source of buying powerful enough to push the broad averages through thick levels of supply and past prior peaks. It seems unlikely that the hoped-for news trigger will come from events related to President-elect Trump’s inauguration on Friday. Even less likely is that economic statistics due out this week will do the trick. Mortgage applications data will be released on Wednesday, but this is going to be a downbeat number, presumably with negative implications for stocks. That leaves Yellen’s speech on Wednesday afternoon. Not much help there, since the statistical economy appears to be doing well enough that she won’t be backtracking quite yet on the Fed’s supposed plan to jack rates three times in 2017. Under the circumstances, I’d look for a dead week on Wall Street, with a 30% chance of a nasty swoon for no apparent reason.
