Since the Fed announcement yesterday, the market has traded with a downward bias. I am not going to predict anything here but I am getting less bullish -not bearish, just less bullish. I don’t go from one to the other overnight so I’ll just let the market play this out. Compared to a month ago - oil is lower, interest rates are lower, geopolitical tensions are lower and yet, the market is just plodding along and looks to be more focused on not losing, rather than winning. I am all for boring, calm trading environments every once in a while, but it feels like we need something to juice this thing or I suspect that we will be hit with a wave of programmed selling.

From a technical perspective, the double-top pattern setup is a legitimate concern, but I think it’s more important to look at some of the fundamentals. Maybe I watched too much of Stephen Roach on Bloomberg today, but I am buying more and more into the possibility of a scenario of perilously low growth. I am not yet convinced of a full-blown recession, but I think it’s ignorant to discount the extent of economic change that has been occuring. Many people that would tend to disregard this anxiety today are also the ones that tried to explain why the flattening yield curve during the past 2 years was not a worry or why the inverted yield curve we witnessed early this spring was “different this time.” Even Ben Bernanke promoted this theory. However, it seems to me that if you look at it objectively, the yield curve did matter and did an amazing job of signaling the economic data that is actually occuring today.

Good luck with your investing and don’t get stuck in a rut.