End of Week Briefing

Well, Thursday was anything but quiet with welcomed volatility. Again, if you just casually look at the markets at the end of the day, it looks just like another ordinary day, though clearly it was not. Here is a look at the price action in the Dow Jones, please click on the chart for a closer view.

We are looking at an hourly chart and you can see the big plunge down of around 180 points, that is what we start the day with. The drop is accredited to Bank problems in Portugal. You can get the full scope of the story here
http://online.wsj.com/articles/markets-tumble-on-european-bank-woes-1404979086
After the initial morning drop the market did find some buying and rallied almost all the way back but faded into the end of the day to only close down 70 points. Just another day but I do think you should be paying close attention while we are at record levels in the US stock markets and complacency just seems to be the name of the game these days. In my opinion there are huge problems with the Banking system worldwide since the 2008 and they are not going away!

While I was away from the markets this past year, there were numerous stories of high profile bankers literally killing themselves. My thoughts, after hearing news like this, they know what's going on or what is coming and just cannot deal with the pressure. Maybe I am wrong, maybe a bit grim but now we have 15 of these deaths in 2014 alone. Do you wonder why you do not see this on the news? Here is the full story from ZeroHedge from yesterday. Please read the full story, job well done by Zero-Hedge with this article
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-10/banker-suicides-return-jpmorgan-executive-blasts-wife-kills-self-shotgun

As for the markets, overnight the Dow Jones futures were up as much as 50 points but have since given up half those gains. Let's see if more selling comes in today to end the week or will we see some stabilization in stocks. With the news from yesterday, the 10 Year Note did fall below 2.50% briefly and the price is perched comfortably above the 125 level, I find the price action here a bit more telling than what the stock market is telling us! Gold did break out above 1335 to hit a high of $1345 early yesterday morning. Gold currently sits at $1338, for the day we would like to see gold hold above 1330 and build for further gains. If we do break 1330, further support should be found at the 1314 level. Me personally, I need to see the 1330 level hold to keep my interest in going forward.

Oil did have an up day yesterday, making a low around $101.55 and trading up to just shy of $103, we are now trading at $102.50. I am watching closely to see how we close the week today. Now the fall has been attributed to falling gasoline demand, as I had been thinking. That is another reason for me to be expecting a possible top is near in the equity markets. Most commodity markets have really come down hard as of late, will it last, no one knows but it could be an early warning sign for those who are telling how strong the consumer is!

Lastly and quickly, the US dollar is hovering above the 80 level this morning at 8017 as of this minute. Euro is slightly above 136, one would think with yesterdays news, the Euro could have been down huge. I hope to have a better clue on what will happen next with the currency markets by how they close out this week. The only important news today is the employment number coming out of Canada. The only currency that I would sell against the US dollar right now is the Canadian Dollar and that is based on technical levels and my feeling that the stock markets will start seeing some turbulent times in the coming weeks.

Be careful trading, maybe today is a good day to observe and see how things look at the end of the week!

TraderMartin