Choppy Bottom

It has been choppy trading since the February 9th V bottom, as the market has gone up as high as 2789 and gotten as low as 2647 over the past 2 weeks.  And like most SPX pullbacks in a long term uptrend, the market has come out of the chop towards the upside.  I wasn't aggressive buying dips during this choppy period just because of my longer term bearishness.  But I sure was not going to be shorting aggressively either.

It is a tricky juncture that we are in.  The long term uptrend has been so strong and going for so long, that you just don't make a blowoff top and reverse down to where it was trading in 2016.  Maybe that is how speculative manias like bitcoin trade, but that's not how equity indexes trade.  Equities are such a huge asset class controlled by both fast and slow money, that trends take a long time to fully mature, especially on the upside. 

If interest rates stabilize, which is probably the most likely scenario, then you can see equities go back above 2800, and test the all time highs.  The markets are too far above 2530 for there to be a retest.  You had enough "scary" news to form a good bottom, beginning with the tariff talk, and out of nowhere, a huge dump in after hours on Cohn resignation.  That made no sense, and showed how nervous and emotionally charged this market is, but I still didn't buy because I was waiting for 2680, and thought there could be a little bit of panic of nonfarm payrolls and CPI next week.  Of course, it never got there.  Sometimes the market doesn't oblige your plans, and its usually best to just let it go and look for the next setup. 

SPX is back above the 2760 level, and it is looking more and more like a grind higher is in store for the next 4 weeks.  Since I don't want to chase any buys on this thing, I will just wait for another opportunity, or just stick with individual stocks.  I expect ES trading to be a lot less interesting in the coming weeks.