Fail-Safe Or Not Fail-Safe? - January 26, 2012

[Wei]

Hi Billy,

Pascal just sent out the 20DMF rt, which shows that no buyer is buying into the bounce. But the tick data shows that the tick is keep going up while the SPY price is going down since this morning. How do you interpret the tick divergence? (20DMF is for big buyer and tick is for market maker? and they disagree at the moment?)

[TraderD]

The rally started around Dec 19, which was an EOY Santa rally and nothing else.
Then, the MF stayed very weak until Jan 18.
So, I believe that if money started moving in, it was on Jan 18.
However, nothing really impressive at that date: more like a "European no-bad-news" relief rally than anything else.

Then, yesterday's announcement, which does not say clearly that we have QE3. However, zero interest rates implies QE3. So, we are trading this implication. However, we start to hear Obama talking about new taxes then next step might be spending cuts/protection against imports. These policies are also what is being pushed out in Europe. These policies will take a long time to be played out... Much longer than stealth printing. So the market is probably trading a short term event first.
Pascal

I suppose one could never know whether Jan 18 MF strength is due to a European relief rally vs speculation (or knowledge) of extending zero interest rates to 2014. Regardless of explanation, it would be re-assuring to know that MF can effectively (pun intended) capture it.

Trader D