Trading System Signals on July 8, 2024

The holiday drift up mode continued. The final trend accelerated around 3:50 pm EST in the stock indexes. Many brokers start to end day trade margin at 3:50 pm EST. Very narrow ranges and a very slow market environment persists. The VIX gapped up towards 13 today but then was down on the day, at 12.36 as of 4:12 pm EST.

The Stock Index Portfolio 18 hypothetical results were -$830 on the day. The One Million MNS 130 hypothetical results were +$7,000 while the 250K Portfolio was +$1,400. The most profitable signals came from Gold and one of the E-mini Nasdaq chopper strategies that reversed long/short all day at the right time. We will highlight that one tomorrow. The counter trend strategies are doing well in this low VIX environment.

We are anxious for our drawdown entry alert as the markets have been extremely calm lately.

Jay Powell speaks tomorrow. Last week, Jay Powell when Jay Powell spoke, it generated a trend but there is typically more volatility when the Federal Reserve chairman speaks.

We posted these statistics last week. We are still tracking these low volatility statistics since there are typically a greater number of "shake ups" in the market.

Some statistics that we heard on CNBC (be sure to fact check):

• In the last 50 years, there are on average 7, 1% down days in the S&P 500 during the summer months. So far, no 1% down days

• No 1% down days since April in the S&P 500

• 18 months since the Nasdaq 100 has had a 2.5% down day - longest streak ever

We anticipate that the next bear market would start slowly from a downtrend that is perceived as a normal pullback, followed by accelerating prices the move lower. The only case we see where a bull market would quickly turn into a bear market at all-time highs is based on the case of a parabolic move similar to a dotcom bubble.