Tuesday saw just about every extreme you could imagine in the market. The emotional swing began when there were so many declaring "new highs here we come" in the early going, and ended with "retest coming" once again. I feel as though I repeat myself daily, but testing and retesting is part of the process.
Again, this is what a post-crash environment looks like. To all those who think we will get a "V"-type bottom -- that would not be me -- there will still be shakeouts along the way. So far, this market has managed to shakeout bulls and bears and seems to do so every single day. I don't think that goes away.
Another extreme on Tuesday was breadth. Remember how poorly breadth acted last week? This week it acts like it wants to lead the way. Breadth stayed quite solid on Tuesday. Call that a plus. But in the big picture, the cumulative advance/decline line has still not achieved last week's high. That was problematic Monday, and is still problematic.
The good breadth, though, has managed to push the McClellan Summation Index up again. That's the good news. The bad news? It now needs a net differential of negative 3,300 advancers minus decliners, which means the market is short-term overbought using this metric.
The Overbought/Oversold Oscillator has been churning around up here for a week now. That's not dissimilar to the way it churned around in an oversold condition as the market fell in March.
Let's take a look at the Volatility Index now. A week or so ago, I showed you the 21-day-moving average of the put/call ratio for the VIX and how high it had gotten. I noted that it was not terribly contrary, when the put buyers were so persistent. We wanted to be on their side. And the VIX has since come down from 65 to 45.
When I look at the chart of the VIX now, I think it looks oversold. I think it ought to rally back near that downtrend line. I do not think it is ready to launch a whole new upside move, but I do think it needs to relieve some of the downside pressure we've seen over the last two weeks.
Finally, I was asked to update my view on bonds. Right near that low in early March, I said I thought it looked like we had hit "panic" in the yield chart (of the 10-year note). Now I would say we're in a trading range between the low and that downtrend line. For me, much depends on if the yield can climb back over that .88% level in the next week or two. That's resistance right now, so if it fails to do so, I will look for another move down in rates.
