CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

"Sentiment Dashboard"
by Adam Oliensis



"SENTIMENT TANK: Drained to 1% full of negative sentiment.


SHORT-TERM: Hourly momentum of sentiment is in an advance phase.


MID-TERM: Moved from a decline phase into neutral at 69/31 with Confidence at 0.


LONG-TERM: Flipped around into an advance phase gaining 4 points to 95% with confidence shooting up to a bullish 3 out of 7 (from a bullish 1).


BOTTOM LINE: Since early June a long-term decline phase has been struggling to assert itself. To no avail. The rising confidence level on the long-term gauge may portend bullishly. Let's see if it holds up this week. The mid-term decline phase was also making little or no noise this past week and is on the verge of quitting on itself, having moved into neutral. It has room to give either a continuation sell signal or a buy signal here. We'll be looking and listening to see which.


The tank is only 1% full of negative sentiment. As we examined last week, the market has a strong tendency to back off when the tank is virtually empty. However the longer-term buy signal may keep the downside fairly contained. We'll operate under that assumption unless/until we see evidence to the contrary. "

MONDAY a.m.
September 8, 2003


"Market Torpor"
by David Nichols

"You've undoubtedly noticed that volatility in the markets has been contracting sharply over the past months. Gone are the big intraday price swings that we've actually grown accustomed to throughout the bear market. Also gone are those big overnight moves in the futures, as overnight risk seems to be a concept that has vanished from the market's collective psyche.

We can put a graphic face on this lack of volatility by looking at the average true range of the markets, which is simply a moving average of the historical volatility of a market, adjusted to account for any gaps up or down. It's a moving average of the intraday point swings, in other words. On the following charts, the look-back period is 14 days.


So the S&P 500 (SPX) is now moving an average of less than 10 points per day, and the VIX is moving about a point. Historically, these are really, really low figures -- and such low readings have been precursors to some serious market thumpings in the past.

The action on Friday was of particular interest, as a little selling squall blew through the market early in the day based on more weak employment figures. Even though the Fed's "reflation" kick is succeeding in making the economy look stronger, sometimes the market gets a little peak at the open wound underneath the monetary gauze layers. After all, there's a reason they're blowing money into the system at an historic rate.

It would be hard to say Friday showed any panic on the part of market participants, but it did show that the quick, spiky moves continue to come to the downside, with the longer, grinding moves happening on the upside. This is typical of tops, as they are often lingering, drawn-out affairs. Judging by Friday's action, it's doubtful this employment report was the spark for a bigger correction, although it did put the market in more of a mood to get shocked to the downside. This is a subtle point, but after such a whopping rally -- and now a technical breakout -- this market is going to need a steady fusillade of bad news to get knocked from its lofty perch.

Sentiment remains complacently bullish -- ridiculously so, in fact. The VIX jumped a bit on the weak employment picture, but by the end of the day the VIX had dropped right back down, as prices stabilized, merely managing to stop falling. So the VIX dropped back down and prices weren't able to climb all the way back, which is a distinct bear market sentiment pattern. Although this hasn't really mattered yet, someday this persistent bullish torpor will catalyze into an enormous amount of energy ready to be released to the downside."