Putin is at it again!
Waves of Russian missiles slammed into Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities early this morning in one of the broadest and most intense barrages of the war, in response to a weekend attack Moscow blamed on Ukraine that seriously damaged a bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had carried out dozens of strikes using missiles as well as Iranian-made drones to target the country’s electrical grid and other civilian infrastructure. “They want panic and chaos,” he said in a video address filmed near his office. “They want to destroy our energy system.” 11 key infrastructure facilities in eight separate regions including Kyiv had been damaged as residents to be prepared for temporary outages of electricity, water supply and communications.
That sent the markets lower early this morning but we’re back to being severly oversold and already bouncing back a bit. On the whole, Russia pushed a button and fired long-range weapons – this doesn’t change the fact that Putin is facing catastrophic losses on the ground – with 60,000 Russian soldiers already dead.
All this chaos has the Dollar back at 113.31 this morning so anything but a falling market is a plus with that going on in the background. The Euro is at 0.975 so it’s a question of when, not “if” the ECB steps in to boost the Euro and now the Swiss Franc is down to $1 as well – a level they have always protected since 2010.
Still, this week is all about getting back over 3,680 on the S&P and 11,000 needs to hold on the Nasdaq 100 and 1,750 needs to be re-taken on the Russell along with 30,000 on the Dow. Earnings begin on Thursday so this should be interesting…
We only have 6 Fed Speakers this week with the minutes of the last meeting coming out on Wednesday. There’s not much going on data-wise until we hit CPI on Thursday morning and Friday we have Retail Sales and Consumer Sentiment.
What worried me on Friday was this huge uptick in Consumer Credit as Consumers are going another $32.2Bn into debt in order to pay for inflated goods and services. This simply CAN’T go on forever – we WILL run out of money at some point. Borrowing at this level while rates are rapidly rising is NOT a good combination.
Yes, there’s a lot of moving parts but the one part that matters most is getting back over the Strong Retrace Line (3,680) on the S&P 500 and then getting back over the Weak Retrace Line at 3,840 into earnings. If we can’t get back into that zone by the end of the month – it may be a strong signal to just cash out and wait for a better signal.
