Sunday 27 July 2014

Traders Shrug Off MH17 Downing, Mideast Fighting

Traders aren't getting overly exercised about the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 almost certainly by Kremlin-backed militia, Israel's incursion into Gaza and fighting in Iraq.

The latest Commitments of Traders report issued Friday has resulted in some new signals taking effect on this week's open of trading, but not a huge swing toward uncertainty or bearishness.

New signals:

- bearish for the Nasdaq-100 and gold
- cash for copper (which had previously been bearish)
- bullish for crude oil

The gold bearish signal is more evidence that traders aren't freaking out. Serious market trepidation would likely have pushed traders to be bullish gold.

S&P 500 Traders Bullish

Other signals remain the same, including S&P 500, which is bullish. In fact, S&P 500 commercial traders substantially increasing their net futures and options position this past week as a portion of total open interest.

This stands in contrast to how commercial hedgers reacted when Russia first invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and started fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine in February.

The "smart money" commercials seem either used to the "new normal" or not overly concerned about market impacts of amped threats of Western sanctions against Russia -- or both.

See my latest signals table for details on how traders are positioned in the 10 markets I trade using the free weekly COT reports from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

No comments: