Stocks were higher, lower, and higher, and they faded towards the end, trading within a fairly wide range throughout Monday. More importantly, the US dollar continues to weaken significantly, falling against the Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and euro.
Equities seemed to diverge from their usual pattern of following the FX market, at least for part of the afternoon. This has occurred for a few days, dating back to last Wednesday. I don’t have a clear explanation for it, but that’s what has happened. Either the markets are diverging because the forces that once aligned them are fading, or the equity market has more downside ahead.
Perhaps more importantly, the dollar index is now very close to breaking support around 99.50 and could potentially head lower to 97.60 or even as low as 96.15. That would be good news for the euro and all others
Stocks may have moved against the currency trend yesterday because rates were lower. Interestingly, stocks and rates have been positively correlated more recently. But not yesterday, it seems, as 10-year rates were sharply lower, and stocks went higher. So I’m not sure if something is changing or if yesterday was just a rally day because investors were still hopeful about the weekend news and tariff exemptions, which wasn’t as positive as it was billed to be in the social media realm.
Essentially, all the S&P 500 did yesterday was fill the gap from the close on April 9. That marked the high for the day, and the index never returned to that level, selling off in the final minutes of trading. Another gap at 5,670 remains unfilled, but given yesterday’s relatively weak market performance, it seems less likely to be filled. Additionally, the strong uptrend that began on April 8 is now broken. This would be a negative sign, and the dollar continues to weaken as the technical suggests, the outlook for stocks rising doesn’t seem likely.