'Tentative neutrality' - might be a reasonable way to describe market status for the moment, and not just because it's depending on upcoming CPI or any other particular economic marker. There are just many uncertainties, war risk, and it's at a time of rising geopolitical tensions, and not just the Middle East.

depositphotos

I'm thinking particularly of the Orwellian approach to keeping the peace in the U.K., where the leadership has tried to 'straddle the fence' after a horrendous attack on girls (and not the only event), as while slapping migrant suspects on the wrist, they decided to lean-on old Brits that stood for tradition and wanted prosecution or at least arrest of the suspects, whereas police did the opposite and arrested Brits expressing their thoughts on Facebook 'for Britain' and not 'for' the biased favorable treatment of migrants (legally in the UK or not) that it was pretty obvious was occurring. Anyway, calm tonight and we shall see.

Anyway... lots of concern out there, tempered optimism too...such as Egypt's warning to avoid Iranian airspace Thursday morning. At the same time there is a report that the new President of Iran urged the 'chief' mullah to restrain his urge to kill people. Presumably means 'please don't strike Israel'.

Speaking of striking, that's what Ukraine did to Russia today, according to my source 11 villages were and are 'occupied' by the Ukrainian Army inside one of the 'oblasts' of Russia, in this case Kursk. What we know is that Putin has admitted Ukraine (he calls them 'militants', what a jerk...it's their Army replying to Russian aggression...admits Ukraine has captured a key gas facility.

As far as stocks, there's not much to handle...all shuffles around pending new data, but there's no change in the 'dog days of August' rotating moves, as the S&P simply struggles to hold above the recent 'carry-trade' washout lows.

We can reference the 'softish' economic landing that we'd like to see, or today as Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan Chase) sounded fairly optimistic. We agree in this area, and also believed the 'Yen Carry Trade' was primarily responsible for the plunge in the market late last week and Monday of this week. Our view was that the collapse of Bitcoin was emblematic in confirming this, for those in the financial media or Wall Street believing it was just recession fears. (We've got that too but again that's this era's normalization of bifurcated economics.)

Speaking of the grander-scale, I also believe the 'design flaw' Nvidia (NVDA) admitted to was a big factor in delaying the major datacenter and/or prospects for the more advanced AI systems, not to mention 'hero' CEO Huang sold hundreds of millions of dollars of shares immediately surrounding the prior thrust higher.

Bottom-line: 

Lots of angina around, as S&P (SPX) merely shuffles above the lows of earlier this week, ahead of economic, war or other news. Domestically a saga stands-out, and it doesn't affect Oil refiners as yet (might as Hurricane Debby reaches New Jersey). Debby was forecast as a slow I-95 Northbound storm, and sure is. Historic flooding in Savannah and now Charleston with more to come. Here in insurance-challenged Florida, lots of Sarasota is under-water, and I have forewarned for some time of the collapse of Florida real estate.

More By This Author: