The S&P 500 finished Monday at the highest levels in over a month. Not bad for a market the crowd fully expected to be crashing to fresh lows.
As I wrote two weeks ago, before the September inflation report:
The market likes to throw in a few head fakes immediately after the [inflation report] lands, but within 30 minutes, the pent-up supply and demand will be too strong to continue the charade and the market will be tracking straight and true for the next big, multi-day move. All we have to do is grab on and enjoy the ride.
Well, here we are, nearly two weeks later and the index is up 300-points from those October lows. That’s an 8.6% gain in straight money and 25.7% in the 3x ETF I like trading. Not bad for a couple of weeks’ worth of “work”.
Now that the index is running up against 3,800 resistance, readers want to know what comes next. Easy, higher prices.
Sure, we might have a minor step back over the next day or two, but markets almost never turn around exactly at support. Since we just kissed overhead resistance on Monday, that means we still have a little more room to run even if this rebound is on the verge of stalling out.
But this isn’t about to stall out. As I often write, the market loves symmetry and that huge selloff from the September highs will result in an equal impressive rebound. Sure, maybe lower prices are ahead of us over the longer term, but never forget the biggest and fastest rallies occur during bear markets, and the last time I checked, this was still a bear market.
The next noteworthy hurdle is the 50 DMA and 4,000 is after that. We won’t know what happens at those levels until we get there and can evaluate the price action. But at this point, the rebound looks solid. If prices were fragile and vulnerable to a collapse, the September inflation report was more than enough to send us tumbling lower. Instead, prices bounced hard and that’s all we needed to know what direction this market wants to go.
Don’t fight a trade that’s working. There is nothing to do here except keep holding and lifting our trailing stops. Don’t overthink this.