Risk mood reserves some caution to start the day


S&P 500 futures are down 0.4% today as the recovery from yesterday is faltering a bit in the new day. Tech shares are the ones once again lagging as risk sentiment is still in a tight spot after last week’s beating. It’s been four weeks of losses in a row for Wall Street and that will be the tougher mood to shake off in the bigger picture.

S&P 500 index weekly chart

The S&P 500 broke its key trendline support earlier this month but dip buyers held off declines at the 5,500 level as seen last week. That will be a key downside level in focus should the selling return this week.

Despite the bit part recovery yesterday, there’s still jitters in the market amid the latest “correction” or “transition”. When lawmakers start using terms like that, it definitely carries some weight. That especially given how Trump-centric this market has become since the turn of the year.

That being said, this is a day and age in which market players can easily switch from fear to greed. Bad news can be so quickly ingested and then forgotten already in just a few days or less. Dip buyers are surely already waiting to pounce on any given opportunity despite this being a less than 10% shave off the top.

All eyes will be on the Fed in the next two days in seeing how the latest economic and political developments have impacted their outlook.

But as we continue to pass through this moment, US data is going to be key in holding up the overall market mood. This week itself won’t see much with only the weekly jobless claims on the agenda. So, all eyes will be on the Fed before switching towards month-end and quarter-end flows next week.