Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on May 8, 2023.
Everyone seems enamored with zero day to expiration (0DTE) options. Trading volume has been huge, and no one exactly seems to know why. The conventional wisdom is that market makers are sellers of these same-day options, while institutional and retail traders are buyers. There have been several articles written on that subject, and certain podcasts have dealt with it as well. The reason that “institutional” and “retail” are lumped together is that institutional traders using bot trading algorithms are easily able to split large orders into many small pieces, to disguise their real size and to make it look like retail. However, since hundreds of thousands of contracts are trading in a single day, there is almost certain to be a large institutional presence among that volume. Regardless, we want to see for ourselves what is going on.
Stocks are still stuck in a trading range. The wider range has its lows in the 3760-3850 area (the lows of both December and March). The narrower, more recent range has its lows in the 4050-4070 area. That was just touched yesterday, but appears to be holding at this time. On the upside, resistance at 4200 is strong and has a lid on this market for now. Above there, the highs of last August at 4300 make for further resistance.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on May 1, 2023.
Stocks had been drifting in a tightening range, causing realized volatility to shrink, and boring the heck out of traders -- even though intraday swings were still present. Then with some earnings announcements this week, $SPX first dropped 65 points one day and then rose 80 two days later.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on April 24, 2023.
Stocks are definitely having trouble with overhead resistance near 4200. This has been a resistance area since last August (it was a failed attempt to close the gap on the island reversal, noted by the circle on the chart in Figure 1). Then it halted the rally in February, and now it has seemingly halted the current rally. Thus, the $SPX chart is not bullish, in that there is not only the resistance at 4200, but resistance at 4300 as well.
Other bear markets have shown similar behavior: realized volatility increases by a relatively small amount, and $VIX therefore does not accelerate to extreme highs. Often, late in the bear market – near its bottom – is when we see a sharper increase in volatility.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on April 17, 2023.
The rally that began in mid-March is persisting. Market internals remain positive, and that is finally having enough of an effect on $SPX (and the market psyche) to push prices higher in a relatively slow manner. Even so, there is formidable overhead resistance at 4200 and 4300, so the $SPX chart will not be outright bullish until those levels are exceeded (in my opinion).
