Thursday, July 01, 2010

The Never Ending Story

Yup! . . just like yesterday. TLT actually looks to be accelerating to the upside on increasing volume . . a further grim prognosis for the major markets. And once again we saw a divergence between the GLD and the GDX although the volume in both ETFs has dropped off significantly. FXF has been on fire on also double normal volume and the FXY, which was projected to hit 112 last week, has now reached that target and is looking more than a bit technically overextended.
Almost without exception all the technical gurus are predicting new lows, much lower lows, before a bottoming process can begin. And, based on those nasty HFT driven end of day plunges we have seen over the past 2 weeks, the probability of such a scenario does seem imminent. Those of us watching the markets intraday have noted several clearly bearish patterns, including the negative skew of the TICK spread throughout the day and the preponderance of large plunge bars that may or may not be accompanied by volume surges. This is just more evidence that the nature of trading is changing before our eyes as HFT, algo trading and order management masking create a market environment that is less and less accessible and transparent to the average retail trader. Discount the apologists who claim HFT adds liquidity to the markets . . these are the same folks who believe front running the markets is just smart trading.

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