Welcome back from the Fourth of July holiday weekend. We've reached a point where even we don't know which way the S&P 500 is going to turn! Here's our alternative futures chart, which shows the most likely trajectory that the S&P 500 will follow depending upon which point of time in the future they focus upon:
Will investors maintain their forward-looking focus on the expectations associated with the fourth quarter of 2014? Or will they shift their attention now toward the second quarter of 2015 as they consider the likely timing of when the Federal Reserve will begin hiking its interest rates? Given where things are right now, it wouldn't take much of an effort to shift the trajectory that stock prices will follow.
Just hope the Fed's minions don't suddenly provide anything more than speculation for investors to focus on the future expected for the first quarter of 2015! Speculation can be offset by other speculation, but if there might be more to it, the Fed will spend the rest of the summer digging U.S. markets out of the hole they dug.
In the Future, Where We Work
A link in this post will suddenly become unbroken....