Markets Close Down, Low Volume, Flat And Directionless

Closing Market Commentary For 10-31-2012

Another day and more of the same. We should close Wall Street for a week so everyone can take a vacation because it will be the same when we return; what a joke. Today is reminiscent of last Thursday’s session, you can almost superimpose the daily chart on top of each other.

Markets closed down, flat and again, I am repeating myself, lackluster and outright dull. Low volume, indecisiveness and directionless are the key words to describe today’s action or lack of it.

I have my doubts, but Dailyfx tweeted, “After being down two days, the VIX has put in for a mild jump today. Now at 18.56. Things get serious again when we push through 19.25%.”

The RRR** was very narrow at the opening bell, just as it has been for the past month and remained so to the closing bell. ‘Guessing’ during last Friday’s closing hour what the market was going to do on Monday, err Tuesday, Wednesday would have brought in a nice profit. Any trades today will probably end up on the unprofitable side as long as this market remains flat or continues to have low volume.

I have issues with some traders in that they are saying there are setups for day trading. This is true enough, but the trading range is so narrow that way too money has to be put on the table just to get back meager gains.

Swing trading is also at your own risk and being the market is at a crossroads of sorts, I would prefer to sit on my hands rather than risk guessing incorrectly. Guessing where the market is going to be tomorrow or next week, at this time anyway, is a foolish endeavor.

The DOW at 4:00 is at 13096 down 10.75 or -0.08%.

The 500 is at 1412 up 0.22 or 0.02%.

The $RUT is at 818.72 up 5.47or 0.67%.

SPY is at 140.96 down 0.39 or -0.28%.

The longer trend is up, the past week’s trend is bearish to neutral and the current bias is down.

WTI oil was up today and is at 86.14 trading between 85.60 and 87.15 and the bias is neutral to bearish.

Crude Products Fail To Hold Gains From Sandy

Brent crude was up today and is now down at 108.42 trading between 08.37 and 109.80 and the bias is negative.

Gold gains as floor trading reopens

Gold is up this morning. Currently trading neutral at 1720.84, trading range is between 1709.10 and 1725.35 with a positive bias.

Dr. Copper is at 3.52 down from 3.56 earlier.

The US dollar fell from 80.05 earlier to 79.72 and has risen back up to 80.04 is currently trading at 80.00.

The 500 at the close.

The DOW at the close.

@zerohedge:

ADP “Cancels” 365,000 Private Jobs Created In 2012

Frequent readers know that in addition of any “data” and “numbers” out of Larry Yun’s National Association of Realtors, which we openly boycott as these are consistently manipulated (recall the massive historical December 2011 revision), slanted and conflicted, the second dataset which we have mocked with a passion is anything coming out of the ADP, which every month releases its “Private Jobs” number a day before the official BLS Non-farm Payroll data.

Today, our mockeries have been proven 100% spot on. The reason?

A week ago, ADP announced that going forward it would coordinate with Moody’s (yes, that Moody’s), and especially its chief economist, SecTres hopeful (InTrade odds of actually attain that post: 0.00) Mark Zandi, to fudge adjust its data going forward.

The data revision was supposed to be publicly disclosed tomorrow when the official October ADP number was released. Well, just like today’s Chicago PMI, and so many other data points recently, this too was released early.

What the early release allowed us to promptly calculate is that using the historically revised numbers, and comparing those based on the original methodology, in 2012 alone, the US would have lost a whopping… 365,000 private jobs!

Putting thus number in context, according to the revised methodology, the US has generated only 1.172MM jobs in 2012 through September, or in other words, a statistical “fix” magically eliminated over 30% of what the market had previously expected were job gains, a number which the incumbent president has certain taken advantage of on more than one occasions while campaigning.

** RRR = Risk Reward Ratio

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Written by Gary