19Nov2015 Market Close: DOW Closed Down 4 Points, Oil Barely Moved Today Remaining In A Tight Trading Zone, Volume Low, Almost Anemic At Times

Written by Gary

U.S. markets closed mixed and flat on lower volume a day after the big rally.

Crude is now into its 17th month of decline, a very mature trend and closed in the low 44’s. While crude can slide further if OPEC and IEA want to keep production levels up, analysts do not think it will drop much further price-wise, because inflation’s coming.

Todays S&P 500 Chart

Oil on the coil

Oil continues to ride lower on a lower parallel which gave it a bid to start the week. On the hourly chart price action is narrowing slick into a triangle. Which way will it break? The trend is down, so the benefit of the path of least resistance suggests it will resolve itself towards lower prices, however, it could break higher and spark a short squeeze. Lower parallel support helps bolster the bullish case. The art of trading these patterns is in the discipline to wait for the break before entering.

A break lower will likely lead to the August lows under 38, while a break higher should result in a move towards key resistance in the 43s.

The Market in Perspective

Here are the headlines moving the markets.
	Wall St. edges lower on healthcare weakness NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 ended a little lower on Thursday as falling healthcare stocks offset gains in Intel and other technology names.
	U.S. consumers favor Amazon for online holiday shopping CHICAGO (Reuters) – A majority of U.S. consumers plan to go to Amazon.com for most of their online holiday shopping, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, even after traditional retailers have collectively spent billions of dollars to try to capture Web demand.
	Brent steady, U.S. crude down ahead of contract expiry NEW YORK (Reuters) – Brent oil futures settled steady on Thursday while U.S. crude fell ahead of the expiry of the front-month contract and continued pressure from large inventory builds.
	Exclusive: Pfizer negotiating 2-3 percent Allergan break-up fee – sources (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc is negotiating a break-up fee in the range of 2 to 3 percent of the value of its roughly $150 billion potential acquisition of Allergan Plc , proportionally in line with other deals, people familiar with the matter said.
	Dorsey’s Square jumps in market debut, offering hope to startups (Reuters) – Shares of Square Inc, the mobile payments company co-founded and still run by Twitter Inc Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, rose as much as 64 percent in their market debut, offering hope to tech startups hoping to go public.
	Starboard asks Yahoo to sell core business instead of Alibaba stake (Reuters) – Activist investor Starboard Value LP asked Yahoo Inc to drop plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd due to tax concerns, and instead urged the company to sell its core search and display advertising businesses.
	Investors “swipe right” in Tinder-owner Match’s debut (Reuters) – Shares of media mogul Barry Diller’s Match Group Inc , the owner of popular dating site Match.com and mobile app Tinder, jumped as much as 24 percent in their market debut on Thursday, valuing the company at $3.57 billion.
	Fairly upbeat U.S. data highlight economy’s resilience WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell last week while a gauge of U.S. economic activity rebounded in October, signs of a healthy labor market and economy that could give the Federal Reserve confidence to raise interest rates next month.
	Best Buy comparable sales down; outlook for holiday season weak (Reuters) – Retail chain Best Buy Co Inc on Thursday forecast a revenue decline for the crucial holiday quarter and reported lower-than-expected quarterly comparable sales, citing slower consumer demand for mobile phones and tablets.
	The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking The question of how the Islamic State funds its sprawling caliphate has been discussed in the past: we first broke down the primary driver of ISIS revenue well over a year ago, in September 2014, when we explained that “ISIS uses oil wealth to help finance its terror operations.” Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness explained the breakdown as follows: According to the Iraq Energy Institute, an independent, nonprofit policy organization focused on Iraqâ€™s energy sector, the army of radical Islamists controls production of 30,000 barrels of oil a day in Iraq and 50,000 barrels in Syria. By selling the oil on the black market at a discounted price of $40 per barrel (compared to about $93 per barrel in the free market), ISIS takes in $3.2 million a day. The oil revenue, which amounts to nearly $100 million each month, allows ISIS to fund its military and terrorist attacks â€” and to attract more recruits from around the world, including America. Most importantly, we added that to be successful in counterterrorism efforts, “the U.S. and its allies must â€œpush the Islamic State out of the oil fields it has captured and disrupt its ability to smuggle the oil to foreign markets.” None of this was surprising to anyone, but what was quite surprising is that it took the allied forces over a year to take the oil revenue threat seriously and begin targeting the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure in earnest. Today, in an article titled “< …
	Why US Equities Are Rallying (In 1 Simple Chart) One more time: Itâ€™s not Paris, Greece, China, Ebola, Fed rate-hike or not, etc… Nothing matters but OPEX… (click image for huge legible version) Source: NorthmanTrader.com
	Unlucky 13? The S&P 500 has not traded lower in the last 30 days of the year since 2002… will it be different this time? Source: Citi
	Exposed – The Clinton Foundation Is Running A $20 Million Private Equity Firm In Colombia Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, The Clinton Foundation is operating a $20 million private equity firm in Colombia, raising concerns from government and consumer watchdog groups who say the practice is unusual and could pose a significant conflict of interest. The line between the firm and the Clinton’s nonprofit world is hazy. Fondo Acceso is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office and staffed by foundation employees, a representative at the office told the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday. A charitable foundation running a private equity fund is “not something one hears about commonly” and is “very concerning,” according to Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen. Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, said the lack of transparency was a troubling. He said the public has a right to know whether any of Fondo Acceso’s companies received U.S. government support while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. – From The Washington Free Beacon article: Clinton Foundation Running Private Equity Fund in Colombia The ties between the Clinton Foundation, Canadian billionaire businessman Frank Giustra and the nation of Colombia run deep. This is a topic I explored earlier in the year in the post,
	Square, Match Surge in Trading Debuts Shares of mobile-payments startup Square and online-dating service owner Match Group surged in their first day of trading, a welcome relief for the beaten-down market for initial public offerings.
	Rate-Rise Bets Heat Up After Fed Minutes A key measure of bets that U.S. short-term interest rates will rise reached their highest level in more than a year, as investors prepared for the first Federal Reserve rate increase since 2006.
	Health-Care, Energy Shares Weigh on Market U.S. stock indexes ended marginally lower Thursday, weighed down by declines in health-care and energy shares. The muted moves for major indexes followed the marketâ€™s biggest rally in nearly a month.
	Just Released: New And Improved Charts And Data On Auto Loans from Liberty Street Economics — this post authored by Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw Today, the New York Fed announced that household debt increased by a robust $212 billion in the third quarter of 2015. Both mortgage and auto loan originations increased, as auto originations reached a ten-year high and new mortgage lending appears to have finally recovered from the very low levels seen in the past year. This quarter, we’re introducing an improved estimate of auto loan originations, some new charts, and some fresh data on the auto loan market. The Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit and this analysis use our Consumer Credit Panel data, which is itself based on Equifax credit data.