SP Futures Hourly Chart at 2:30 EDT

Some short term indicators are flashing that we are nearing at least a short term top. There is also indication of distribution of stock here by insiders to the public, which is also an indication of a possible top. This judgement is based on many charts and indicators not shown here.

Having said that, our discipline will not prompt us to do any seriously non-hedged shorting until the ‘trendline’ Key Pivot is violated at least on a daily close, and then confirmed by a move lower.

The market is rising on thin volumes, and unless the sellers come back in, it can continue to drift higher on program trading and short squeezes.

We are within two weeks of a potential ‘crash window’ where a final top will be made, and a selloff with a significant leg lower will be seen into the end of year. The window is a bit wide for now, a six week period starting around August 17th. We will hope to tighten that up by the end of July.

This is only a probability, not a hard forecast. But it has us edgy to be on the long side, even in precious metals miners, without hedging a general market decline. The Cashflow in the market is looking a bit stretched. We may have to wait until later in earnings season for this to shake out.

In sum, the markets seem ‘precarious’ and unstable to us, but not enough to jump in front of the market to the bear side yet. 

As an aside, we are seeing quite an increase in ‘screwy fills’ on the bid ask level II where fills on the retail side seem to be made ‘out of bounds’ of the usual bid/ask action.

We do not use market orders normally and would not suggest them here for those that do. The market makers are shaving fills and front running perhaps although that is harder to spot except on the thinly traded stocks where other issues may come into play.

But we are seeing far too many fills BELOW our limit bids on some stocks to believe this market is functioning normally.

[Click on chart to enlarge]