5/3 Morningline: Stocks and Bonds

It's one of those second-guessing mornings in the markets, the kind that says, "It's not so scary after all."

	trend	adx	psar	pps	macd	macd trend	sto	sto trend
SPY $119.47
VIX 21.76
TLT $91.36

At 9:52 a.m. Eastern

Blue chip stocks (SPY) opened up half a percent from Friday's close and was trading narrowly.


Long-term Treasury bonds (TLT) gave up almost all of Friday's large gains.

Volatility, as measured by the so-called fear index (VIX) opened a bit above Friday's peak but quickly pulled back, traversing 3.4% high to low intraday.

We've seen this sort of indecision a lot in the markets of late. I've heard analyses that call it a topping movement, and well it may be. But, it could also just as easily be seen as a sideways pause before the rise resumes.

There's no decisive evidence either way.

Note that in the case of SPY, the notoriously fickle stochastic has already given up its bearish pretensions and is rising through the neutral zone.

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Abbreviations:
psar - Parabolic Stop and Reverse
adx - Average Directional Index
pps - Person's Proprietary Signal
ma20 - 20-day moving average
macd - Moving Average Convergence-Divergence
mfi - Money Flow Index
sto - Fast Stochastic

About the glance: The colors indicate the state of each signal.

• trend: Determined by the 5-day moving average, green for up, red for down, yellow for sideways
• adx: orange for above 30-up, blue for 20-down, purple for in the middle. Red is most prone to whipsaws
• psar, pps, macd: green for bull mode, red for bear
• sto: green for overbought, red for oversold, yellow for the neutral zone.

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