Today's entire stock market action was contained in the span of an hour starting with the open, following a series of economic data which, as was to be expected, couldn't possibly disappoint several days ahead of the election. Sure enough, after everything came in mostly in line or beat, ES ramped from its recent support level just north of 1400 to a high of about 1424, in no more than 60 minutes, and meandered there for the balance of the day where it also closed, on above average volume. What is interesting is that unlike yesterday, when the ramp took place in the overnight, ES-driven session, following which it fizzled all day, today it finally allowed retail investors to jump in alongside the first of the month capital flows. Needless to say, equities were once again in a vacuum of their own, with the EURUSD sliding, TSYs broadly unchanged, and that one time biggest driver of market upside, Apple, unable to stage any break out.
Stocks sizzled...
... even as AAPL fizzled.
Whether the rally can sustain itself remains to be seen, especially since to many the primary catalyst was, ironically, the now discredited ADP report, which following its "revision" is now expected to be far more accurate and indicative of the "real" NFP, which means many simply have front-ran tomorrow's NFP number which is expected to come in at +125,000 but the whisper "priced in" number is now at 150,000.
Should the NFP disappoint for whatever reason, today's rally will be promptly unwound. On the other hand, as the final major economic datapoint before the election, there is a snowball's chance in hell the NFP beats at anything less than 1 standard deviation. The good news, for those who are sick and tired of the constantly fudged metrics, is that after next week, we revert back to normal, and the mysterious economic push higher (a lot of it reflexive: Why are you confident? because stock are higher. Why are stocks higher? because I am confident) in the past 2 months will finally dissipate.