EB Daily Market Report - Friday, December 13, 2024

Dear Members.

Just a reminder that Tom Bowley and StockCharts.com's Senior Technical Analyst Julius de Kempenaer, will be conducting a webinar tomorrow, "Key Rotation into 2025" that you are invited to attend. There's no need for you to register and you will receive room instructions tomorrow morning before the event begins.

Today is Friday the 13th and the market is reminding traders of this fact with all of the major indexes lower as the S&P and NASDAQ struggle to advance beyond recent highs.

The early enthusiasm today has waned and it's not totally surprising given the fact that the equity put/call ratio that Tom pointed out the other day shows a major imbalance of long to short options positions. In other words, too many bets on the long side, just one week ahead of next Friday's monthly options expiration, with Market Makers looking to trim some of the call premium. The selling also coincides with an historic period that has favored the bears.

Of course we've seen many instances of late where traders were more than willing to buy on any dips and we'll see if that's the case this time around. To the downside, the S&P has technical support at 6014, the current 20 day moving average. If that goes, we could see more selling with price support just above 5940. To the upside, the bulls will need to clear the recent high of 6099 if they hope to take the market higher into year end.

Interestingly, the VIX has barely budged today; certainly no panic selling here. And historically, once we get past December 15, the picture starts to get rosier. So let's see how the market closes today and Tom will be back with his Weekly Market Update on Monday.

At your service,

John Hopkins