S&P 500 was slowly crawling higher premarket again, but turned disappointed over Powell testimony – and Russell 2000 even more. Not that he would bring up rate hikes, but didn‘t commit to rate cuts either. The resulting increase in odds of no Sep cut went up marginally from 23% before the tesimony to 25% to close the day. Nothing dramatic, but acknowledgment of CRE issues as to be lasting for years, then the latest deterioration in the job market and necessity to wait for a good disinflationary data series after the unfavorable figures at the start of the year, took their toll.

Took their toll as in dialing back the rate cuts and liquidity optimism in stocks, but NVDA stole the Nasdaq spotlight while XLC and XLY did well – and this tells us as much as we need to know. My expectations of not truly dovish Powell (unlike his showing next to Lagarde the week before), allowed to capture an intraday short opportunity.Also the shares that I picked up in the daily analysis, they proved good candidates for brief momentum plays.

As cryptos continue their recovery from late last week (talked more on the Twitter feed back then), USD and yields are the charts to watch for signs of easy money expectations.

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