Trade Plan for 2/12-2/16

The market is threading the needle, but will the haystack catch fire?

Last week’s subtitle for my note was: The oil trade and bad market breadth. Does indices halitosis matter?  First I’ll give you my take last week on oil.  I remained bullish despite the bearish engulfing weekly candle and wrote:

Here’s the updated chart showing the bounce from the bottom of the consolidation✅:

Now let’s talk about the bad market breadth:

$RTY/small caps futures hit a low of 1925.4 on Monday and I scaled into it after alerting on Discord.  

As anticipated, $RTY did outperform through midweek last week.  From there $RTY held momentum as the market halitosis got a big dose of breadth freshening.

I still consider precious metals to be in consolidation mode in the bigger picture. 

Summary of Market Action Last Week:

• The indices dipped on Monday and worked themselves upwards from there to close the week green.  $RTY/small caps futures was the strongest gainer this week, while $ES/SPX futures continued the grind and notched the 5000 weekly close.  

•  $GDX/gold miners underperformed the indices.  $GC/gold futures and $SI/Silver futures both closed nominally down for the week, though gold held strength a touch better than silver.

• $CL/Crude Oil futures made a lower low on the week, but then quickly regained much of its drawdown from the previous week. $XOP/oil equities settled for a gain in line with the broader market. 

Here’s how last week closed out:

For the week ahead (02/12-02/16/24)