What Does This Portend? from Victor Niederhoffer
Disregarding the penumbra of small moves, 5 big 10 reversals in a row… what does it portend?
Anatoly Veltman writes:
In the good old times, when charting still worked– increased choppiness of this magnitude tipped pending "previous trend" reversal. Currently, "previous trend" would have to be the up-move from 1000 to 122.
George Parkanyi writes:
I would agree with Anatoly in this situation. Quiet day today, yet treasuries and VIX up a lot on a relatively mild 8 point S&P drop. Major skittishness here I think precursing a downdraft. (Asian markets looking scared in particular with China's anti-inflation sabre-rattling.) But all the bailouts and easings won't just vanish either, so I'm thinking we're at/near the top of some kind of range, to be pushed around for a while by the news-du-jour. Don't have any great conviction for where we go next, but if you put a gun to my head, short-term I would sell equities and commodities and buy treasuries or just go to cash. (And two weeks from now I'll be writing about why that was a bad idea.)