Market Briefing For Tuesday, April 11

Daily action yet again showed the market's incredible rotational resilience on Monday; coming back from the first post-opening rally pullback.

Tuesday may be soft initially; then news-dependent. Partially because this is a shortened-trading week, with both Passover and Easter occurring. So any rebound that has much chance of going anywhere needs to be a Tuesday turnaround of sorts. Then it might languish as there are also terror threats to Christianity in the Middle East and one network suggests the Pope's coming trip to Egypt is ill-advised danger.

For now the S&P continues bouncing off the lower limits of it's stabilization range; and assorted moving averages. Any penetration thereof could rapidly accelerate into a more spirited liquidation; not because the market is a sort of 'coiled spring' able to move either way; but because algorithmic traders won't do much on an upside breakout; but would do quite a bit of damage if it tanks. So upside potential is dramatically lower than downside risk.

Prior highlights follow:

Subdued but choppy market responses signaled a stock market that very interestingly absorbed the overnight attacks on the Syrian airbase with fairly benign reactions, on a relative basis. The ensuing hostility from the Russian Government, besides making it clear (or creating the narrative for those that remain in the conspiracy camp) that Trump is no pawn of theirs, was sadly pathetic, as they seemingly ignore the 'chemical warfare' aspect of Assad's action (presuming of course that the Intelligence is accurate on that).
 

It was the Russians who assured the entire world several years ago that 'all' Assad chemical weapons were declared and removed as you know. Plus of course the Russians were intertwined with the Syrian airmen at that base so how could they not know chemical weapons were being on-loaded onto the Russian-built aircraft? On that score reports say the Pentagon's looking-into whether Russia was 'complicit' in the chemical attacks.

Of course conspiracy and 'false flag' crowds are rife this weekend with ideas as to what's really going on. Typically they want to either question why those of the media normally condemning anything Trump says or does, scurrying over to either heap praise on the President for his bold action (with concerns about what it may lead to); or question whether it was a diversion. Actually it is the NeoCon and Conservative base that seems most perplexed, because they think (and I believe there's good logic for that, and it's isn't a bad thing) Ivanka in-particular, and Jared Kusher (you'll recall I believe they're modern Centrists and perhaps Democrats at that) are influencing President Trump a lot more than Bonner is, which is why they had another 'bury the hatchet' or similar meeting (second one) this morning in Palm Beach. As always, we'll never know whether that was 'really' achieved as things can happen later.
 

Too many responses are classic 'agenda politic-driven' and avoid assessing this mess realistically; although 'critical thinking' isn't easy in that morass. Of course there's a desire to not become embroiled further in Syria's civil war; nor create a power-vacuum that terrorists can move into (as even so-called 'rebels' in Syria are often fundamentalist Muslims so you don't want that risk turning-into another Libya or even Iraq, where chaos replaces a despot).

 

At Press time another terror attack thwarted; this time in NORWAY

This coming week's meeting in Moscow between Sec'y. Tillerson and Lavrov is vital now; if we're to see this new friction eased. That presumes it wasn't intended all along, which is what a couple conspiracy types say based on Russian and Syrian anti-aircraft or missiles defenses not locking-onto the known-incoming cruise missiles. Note that the Tomahawk is really an older design; it's NOT supersonic, and though the media says it's very fast, that's nonsense. It's slower than a typical airliner; at 540 mph. It's rocket-launched and 'ramjet' powered, so it's far slower than Silkworm or new modern cruise missiles. That says the Russians intended not to interfere with the attack.

Of course the key narrative of the Russians and Syrians is that the attack in this case was on a facility Syrian rebels used to assemble gas artillery shells to fire on Syrian forces; though there is no evidence of that. That's the core explanation of why Russia 'acknowledges' the flight-path of the Sukkoi jet; saying it was indeed targeting chemical warfare facilities, not dropping gas. Probably this will not get clarified, although notably the Russians didn't use this opportunity to condemn chemical/gas warfare; just the US attack.

Bottom-line: the market was extremely resilient towards the attack and all the scurrying-around thereafter; and isn't concerned about Russia's frigate, now tailing the two American destroyers, starting any confrontation at sea.