The week that lies ahead though is usually the ‘Santa rally’ week, so perhaps our caution and maybe even slight bearishness might again be off the mark. Nonetheless there are some good trading setups out there. Furthermore, we thought that this week we would share our 2021 roadmap for Bitcoin. Next year, we think, is going to be wild!
Well, technically the Santa rally is only really the period between Christmas and New Years, although traders have been ‘front running’ this seasonality a little over the last few years. Furthermore, from what we’ve seen on the newswires over the weekend, it seems that another round US Fed stimulus is almost certainly going to be finalised before US markets open on Monday. Nothing like a freshly minted $900 billion to get markets into the festive mood.
There are still a few weeks to go before Christmas, but hopes of a Santa Rally are starting to take root. For now, most of our watch-list still appears bullish, although there are some warning signs. We could be seeing some early signs of fading momentum on the major indices, although it might still be too soon to tell.
We suspect that over the next few weeks and months, mainstream media is going to get swept up in the ‘all about Bitcoin’ narrative. More importantly, Thanksgiving sets off a number of seasonal patterns as well. We need to combine several of them for one trade.
Last week, after a strong start to the week, we saw the moves fade and the rest of the week resolve in directionless action on the major indices. Locally our banks popped well, although started pulling back a little in the second half of the week. For the coming week, we see opportunities in Gold miners for high risk-reward long positions at the start of the week. With some luck we’ll see decent pullbacks in the banks for good long setups in the second half of the week.
Finally the US election is behind us! We’ll still see how far Trump goes to contest the election outcome, but so far it seems the the courts are not entertaining the idea. So ok, Biden wins, what now? It is reasonable to expect that more COVID related stimulus will done and the Dollar should keep weakening on that. This likely leads to more ZAR strength and might direct some investment flows into emerging markets.
During the last week we started seeing some signs of distress in the Nasdaq, with some heavyweights beginning to show a little bit of weakness. Our strategists put up two posts on the current outlook on the Nasdaq on the International Outlook blog, which showed some key support levels being tested and broken. With those in mind we are slightly more cautious this week.
One of the things that we’ve been thinking about over the last few weeks is; the past. We find ourselves wondering how similar this current situation is to the one back in 2009/10. Could the monetary stimulus just refuel the rally and keep the market (first) and the world economy (second) pushing higher and harder? Possibly, yes.
The world is mostly mad, but luckily our views and beliefs about the world around us has little to do with what is actually happening, and the key to moving forward is to respond appropriately to the external environment, regardless of whatever it is that we might believe. Our job as traders is now and has always been to simply follow the market. Therefore we look mostly at technical analysis again this week so that we stay unbiased.
This week we are looking at a few local charts from a technical perspective only. Sometimes we get a little caught up in the noise that comes with consuming news around the market. Thus, sometimes it is helpful to just block out all the noise and just look at the charts. The mantra we often have to repeat to ourselves as traders is ‘allow the market to lead’.
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