Likely to remain volatile into next week. + US 10 Year + Is Greece hotting up again?

The US equity markets continues to behave in a volatile nature, this is not surprising given the weight of news and data over the next week. A QE story seems to hit the wires about every 5 minutes, it appears that opinion remains strongly divided both within the Fed and outside. My call is that Bernanke, being the sly old fox, will pander to both sides, perhaps not doing as much as the most extreme expectations, but none the less providing a strong boost, but within that also allowing flexibility for the future so that of he needs to hit it heavy and hard he can, or if he needs to ease back he can. - I do not expect the issue to actually be resolved fully next week, thus this will likely remain an on-going theme for the next several months, adding to increasingly volatile markets. I do not think much, direction wise, will be resolved until next week at least, but clearly the news will have the ability to slice a chunk off of the market, or give it an extra boost, which is why we are seeing increasingly volatile short-term action.

Moving on to US 10 Year yields. This is obviously a central theme in the on-going QE debate, since these are likely to be one of the main tools used by the Fed in the QE operations. However, an awful lot has been priced in on these, and in the past few weeks some of the froth has started to disappear from the 10 year t-note futures markets: Yields have seen a decent pick-up, rallying almost 40bps from the low 2.30s to the low 2.70s yesterday. I had been expecting this to move lower towards 2.00%, however whilst I do not rule this out for a later trade, short-term it looks like a low is in, and the risk of a rally towards the low 3 handles is a real possibility in the next few months. The first chart below shows US yields over the past couple of years.

The chart above shows how the yield has been forming a 'Falling Wedge' pattern in recent months, whilst momentum as measured by the 10 day RSI has been diverging upwards. The past couple of days has seen a breakout from the wedge, the yield may comeback to re-test the top of the wedge, but the risk is that it holds and moves higher. - The 10 Year t-note continuation future chart is also supporting these assertions. The top chart below shows this on a weekly basis. A couple of observations which I have highlighted:

• Firstly the strong similarity between the recent price and momentum action and the price and momentum action at the interim top in early 2008, both highlighted within the mauve ellipses. Note the sharp correction led to an extended consolidation, after which the main rally re-asserted itself. 

• Secondly the similarity between the bigger picture price action and the next chart below which shows Gold weekly 2006 - 2010, in particular the price behaviour as highlighted by the large red ellipses on both charts. On both occasions the breakout of these large patterns led to strong dynamic rallies. In the case of the Gold the rally eventually led to the Gold price being well overbought in late 2009. This saw a sharp correction followed by consolidation, eventually however the rally in Gold, as we know re-asserted itself.

The market is likely to see some rebound I think before and possibly around next week's news, however the move to higher yields could be a theme in the next few weeks.  Will this affect stocks? I am not sure, historically these markets move inversely, however the relationship between these two has not been consistent in recent years. However, if stocks were to suffer a sharp drop, then it is likely that bonds rally and yields drop, thus if the above scenario above were to occur, it is likely it would happen against a steady or rallying stock market environment.

Finally with regard to Greece; there has been a lot of negative talk hitting the wires these past couple of days. One theme seems to be how, with economic conditions weaker than expected (not helped by the EURUSD recovery), tax revenue is coming up short of projections in parts of Europe, and as a result countries struggling with high deficits are now confronting the prospect that they will miss the budget deficit targets forced upon them this year. In the past couple of days things have started to stir in Greece whilst Ireland has had mounting issues in the past couple of weeks. The charts below show the 5 Year CDS for Greece and Ireland over the past 6 months, below that is a chart of the SP500 Index and the EURUSD. I have highlighted the two prior occasions when the 5 year CDS prices moved up sharply in the past 6 months, and how this saw sharp drops in the SP500 and the value of the EURUSD. In addition I have placed emphasis on the action of the past week. - If this whole Euro Sovereign Debt issue were to explode again, then the above analysis is likely to be wrong on the T-note, as US yields should drop as a safe-haven bet while equities would once again probably turn ugly.