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Composite Liquidity Indicator (CLI) – Shows Stocks As Oversold

Are You Kidding Me?

Can this be right? Did the stock market become oversold in mid October versus Composite Liquidity. This chart said that it did. And even after this huge 2 week rally, it’s still much closer to oversold than overbought. The S&P 500 is still near the bottom of the liquidity band.

It’s very similar to a look it had in July 2011. That preceded 4 years of a relentless, virtually unbroken bullish string.

What should cause us to expect change?

Doug Noland’s Credit Bubble Bulletin: Well, That’s Some Weird… Stuff

Monday’s Pfizer announcement followed pivotal elections by only a few trading sessions – an election I have posited as the most hedged individual event ever. Markets were already in a state of acute instability prior to the news, having been spurred sharply higher by the unwind of hedges and short positions.

Those positioned bearishly had suffered only deeper impairment, while derivatives markets were moving toward dislocation. Holders of puts were in liquidation mode, while those that had written out-of-the-money call options (and similar derivatives) were facing rapidly escalating exposure. In the leveraged speculating community, the more sophisticated strategies were performing poorly. In particular, long/short strategy performance was suffering the effects of a brutal short squeeze along with violent rotations. A marketplace consumed with momentum was all Crowded together in the favored technology and “stay-at-home” stocks.

The Pfizer news showered gasoline upon the bonfire. It was a melt-up dislocation and short squeeze as intense as I’ve witnessed over recent decades. Segments of the market traded as if some hedge fund and sophisticated derivatives strategies were “blowing up”. As for long/short strategies, things went from bad to cataclysmic. From Bloomberg: “…Market winners and laggards switched positions at the fastest rate on record Monday.” Attacked savagely, the persecuted bears were hit with a fateful blow. A “bear” ETF lost 11% of its value in a chaotic Monday trading session.

Sure enough, such a market outcome “statistically never could happen.” In reality, such a freakish backdrop created a high likelihood of just this kind of mayhem and market dislocation (either up or down).