Intraday Blues as Trading Conditions Remain Perilous

WTI Crude Oil should have gone back down below $80.000 in many folks thinking – and they may have bet on this strike price via options –  due to ideas of an Iranian ceasefire, but the target has not been met. WTI did in fact challenge $88.000 early this week, but it is back around $93.000.

With the weekend quickly approaching and concerns about what will happen when the marketplace is largely shuttered, March mayhem has opened the door for April surprises. Gold is near $4,737.00, and this price remains mildly upsetting for many who believed it would act as a safe haven asset that would gain during the war, but hasn’t responded with buying fever. Gold was near $5,180.00 on the 27^th of February. But in fact gold has performed rather well considering it was riding a long-term speculative buying spree and its current price still remains well above where is was last year around this time near $2920.00.

The point? The markets still exists and can still be bet on. The parameters may have changed, but let’s recall at this time last year global investors were dealing with the potential of Trump tariffs which was an entirely other set of hypersonic conditions caused by noise. If you don’t like loud markets you can cover your ears. You can try to take advantage of them too, but day trading the marketplace via Forex, commodities and stock indices has always been gambling. Perhaps this is what you are looking for – price action.

Again, the global markets are not concerned with your feelings. If you want to cry, grab a tissue and sit on the sidelines until the big show is over. However, know that the Iranian war is certain to have an encore from either a new round of potential fighting in the Middle East via stresses caused by the said openings/closings of the Hormuz Strait, or some other entirely new flashpoint elsewhere. 

The S&P 500 closed slightly below 6783.00 yesterday, last year the index was close to 5,745.00. Sometimes the best thing all traders and investors can do is take a deep breath and believe in better days.

Near-term price action will remain choppy. That is very easy to say and agree to, yet it tells you nothing. It doesn’t tell you what the markets are going to do today or tomorrow. And the reason for that is that intraday performance at this juncture is being driven by swiftly changing sentiment in which momentum is a swirling sea. Technical traders may claim they have a handle on the price skirmishes via their perceptions, but are likely suffering like everyone else as they try to surf the rather wild waves.