The recent bear market rally was kicked off on March 10th with the S&P500 at 676 and has most likely peaked on April 13th at around 858.
The market has been flooded with phoney reassurances, in particular for banks. It started with Citigroup expecting great results for Q1 and went on recently with Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. But as explained already, most of these announcements left a lot of doubts:
Citigroup – CEO’s phony statement sparks phony rally
Wells Fargo Needs Another $50 Billion
Goldman’s Orphan Month
Matt Theal at Minyanville writes:
The S&P 500 opened down today but quickly rebounded before selling off with Goldman. The index briefly tagged the 856 level before closing at 841. The market’s inability to get above the 850/860 square out (per Professor Cooper) shows that the level may be a top for the current rally.
Tomorrow will be a big day for economic data. First, traders will be watching the CPI, Empire Manufacturing, Net Long-Term Tic Flows, Capacity Utilization, and Business Inventories. These reports will be due out after the bell. Some market pundits blamed today’s sell off on weak retail sales, if there are any numbers that are worse then expected, watch for the market to sell off tomorrow. Right here I think all the positive data is priced in, it feels as if we are setting up for a sell off.
On top of that, it’s options expiration week. Today is Weird Wollie Wednesday:
“Weird Wollie Wednesday”, created by Don Wolanchuk, references the Wednesday prior to options expiration. The observation made by Wolanchuk stipulates that this day is made up of manipulated price action which is primarily related to the faster deterioration of options premiums during the week prior to options expiration; many traders are rebalancing and rolling their options forward. Using WWW as a guide, it is not uncommon to see strong moves down in the market place on the Wednesday prior to options expiration week.
To pick up on Mish’s S&P 500 Crash Count: In Elliot Wave Terms, we might have seen Wave 4 of 5 down and should now be entering wave 5 of 5 down.
Wave C down, broken down into 5 waves:
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Wave 5 closeup:
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According to Elliot Wave theory, Wave C down can extend wave A down by 1.618 times. Wave A was from 1,572 down to 800 which is a drop of about 772 points. This means that wave C down could be as many as 1249 points. Wave B peaked at 1,561, which means that wave C could take the S&P500 as low as 312.
It is questionable whether wave 5 of 5 down will take the S&P that low. It is probably reasonable to assume that it will bottom out somewhere between 312 and 600.