The market action had been better the last couple of days. Even with a very bad ISM Manufacturing Report number yesterday, the market was able to hang in rather well. Makes sense on some level, since there's that push-pull going on between pessimism and fundamentals. The market had hoped that we'd see a push higher off a solid jobs report this morning pre-market. Wasn't in the cards. The number was 61K jobs created below expectations. To make matters worse, we also saw heavy downward revisions for the months of July and August. Combined a push lower by 59K jobs. 117K total less jobs created than expected from July through September. The futures were much higher prior to the announcement, but turned sharply lower once the news came out. The free fall was on. The market plunging at the open, and this remained the case for the first thirty minutes, but that was where the selling stopped. Just too many shorts.
Once the SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) lost the gap top the buyers stepped in. Not enough bears to balance it out and off we went well off the lows. Bad news just couldn't get the bears to take away the gap and head towards key support between 1867 and 1860 where we have the uptrend line off the March 2009 lows. A powerful, six-year plus trendline of support. Like the bull market at the top, there just weren't any bulls left to carry us higher. Now we may be running out of bears to carry us appreciably lower. Maybe all the bad news is in. Imagine if the market had a catalyst from unexpected good news! The bears would really be in big-time trouble. Anyway, the bottom line is we saw fear in action today. Too much. When the absolute, worst possible news hit, the market found its short-term bottom at least. You never know in this crazy game.
The bank stocks naturally took the biggest hit early on today, and though they recovered very well off the lows, I'd have to think that they are probably, for the most part, an area to avoid. The Fed won't be raising rates any time soon, and the banks love a rising interest rate environment. The Fed is in a real box here. She knows she needs to raise rates, since there's absolutely no inflation, but since the economy is dying a slow death she's afraid to do so. I wouldn't want to be her right now. She's probably losing sleep. Then again, maybe not, or she would have acted sooner. Now the market is predicting a rate hike in March. Yes, I said March. If the economy continues to weaken, it may be March, but maybe not in 2016. Her low-rate scenario is still forcing some dollars into the market, which is why it's down so little off the 2134 highs.
Yes folks, so little. We're only down a bit over 10% on the S&P 500, and that's really nothing when you consider how far up its come and how much bad news the market is dealing with currently. No one would be able to complain if we were down 25%, yet all we're down is 10%, and that's really nothing at all. 10% down, and yet we're at record levels of short interest and have a bull-bear spread at -10%. The bulls will take that every time. So yes, the news out there is really bad. The global economy is in terrible shape, yet the market is barely falling. Maybe in the end my thinking was wrong and we're not in a bear. Time will tell, but, for now, the very worst of things didn't hit the market. Nothing is really safe, and the back and forth is likely to continue, but you can't hate today's action if you're a bull.
In the end, it comes down to that six-and-half-year uptrend line off the March 2009 lows. Only when that gets wiped away will the bears officially have the market where the want it. 1945 is resistance, and if that gets taken out 1987 would be next. Lots of gap downs off the top, so nothing will be easy for anyone. Just the way it is. If it were one or two gaps the job wouldn't be that difficult, but there's five or six gaps lower, and some of them are quite large in nature. So I wouldn't get too happy if I were a bull. Yes, an amazing save today, but the technical damage down was intense, so easy on the happy gas. The market will likely frustrate both sides for some time to come. Get used to it. Best to buy weakness.