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It’s an exceptionally quiet pre-open, with the /ES up all over 0.05%, and yet with the FOMC looming and MSFT/META just after the close, the day will not be a boring one.

The small caps, represented by /RTY below, have had a very choppy week. The good news is that it seems to be banging out a series of lower highs with each attempt to push higher.
 

Longer-term, the powerful rally seems to have exhausted itself over a month ago, as illustrated by this weekly chart of the same contract.
 

Indeed, the /NQ shows how the past few months have been pretty much three distinct phases. The first, in red, was the extraordinarily volatile period of late March and early April, with the wildest period being April 3rd through April 7th. The next phase was more muted but still dynamic, in blue. The most recent, in purple, has been an absolute snooze-fest of prices just obediently stomping a little higher every single day, typically with lifetime highs every day with the notable exception of weekends.
 

On a more cheerful note, it does seem that my China trade (by way of FXI) continues to work out, with this daily chart illustrating how prices are at the cusp of slipping back below this gap and completing a failed bullish breakout.
 

A more detailed view, which shows pre-opening trades, has the FXI already under $38. This is my largest position.
 

I remain medium-committed with about 100% of my cash deployed across 25 positions. I have more buying power (or shorting power, actually), but I’m going to take it easy for maybe a day or two to see how things shake out with Jerome and the Mag-4 earnings.

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