An Opportunity For The Bulls

Futures are down but not out. There seems to be a floor under them for the time being, and if price can hold the 1690 on the S&P cash, yesterday's action could be the start of a nice impulse up.

Core PPI rose less than expected, and wholesale prices were unchanged. At 11 am ET, the Fed's household debt report comes out, and at 3:15 pm ET St. Louis Fed president Bullard will give a speech. Not sure how market moving the household debt figures may be, but the Fed seems dead set on milking its "communications tools" for as much of an illusion of control as they can get. So there could be some volatility.

Below yesterday's 1682.62 low could see 1676.03 quickly. There is a big opportunity here for the bulls to the upside, but if I don't see a strong thrust higher by some time this afternoon, I will turn bearish.

Bloomberg reports that Bill Ackman will likely dump his J.C Penney position for about a $700 million loss. Two lines jumped out from the article:

Ackman, who started his first hedge fund at the age of 26, three months out of Harvard Business School in Boston . . .

He started his first hedge fund with Harvard classmate David Berkowitz and raised $3 million, even though neither had any professional experience.

So the poor guy doesn't know much more than going to school and running a fund that entails complaining to boardrooms. You can bet Ichan knew that Ackman would be easy prey in a $1 billion trading duel on HLF.

Bloomberg is also reporting that the news of Apple's entry into the biometric space is causing a flurry of gains in several biometric stocks. That's cool. But it doesn't look like people either know or care what is really going on here.

One Swedish biometric CEO said: "If Apple gets its fingerprint solution to work seamlessly and delivers a great user experience, it will mean a paradigm shift and a milestone for biometrics.”

I wonder what George Orwell would have thought a "great biometric user experience" might be. You can be sure the paradigm shift will occur in the world of privacy and human dignity.