Tuesday -- Fearless Girl, Six Sigma VIX

S&P E-mini Futures:
Prices held the afternoon rally through the night and tacked on modest gains.

Markets:
Mixed in Asia, green in Europe where the mood has brightened following the French presidential debate where centrist Emmanuel Macron was viewed as the winner over far-right Le Pen.

Not too fast.

Hilary "won" all her debates, too.

And the latest OpinionWay poll shows Le Pen in the lead. Another poll shows nearly 40% of French youth back Le Pen.

Chicago Fed's Charles Evans shook up the markets a bit yesterday:

*EVANS SEES MORE UPSIDE POSSIBILITY IN UNCERTAINTY FACING FED,
THIS IS A CHALLENGING TIME TO GET BIG U.S. FISCAL BOOST
*EVANS: LOWER CAPITAL EXPANSION MAY REFLECT LOWER TREND GROWTH
*EVANS SAYS MARKETS CAN HANDLE FED BALANCE SHEET NORMALIZATION

There it was, again, "balance sheet normalization"-- what the market probably fears more than rising rates.

Mood:
Bitcoin up over 4%. Still testing this as an indicator. Spirits rising perhaps.

30 years after a world-famous sculptor spent $350,000 of his own money to cast the iconic "Charging Bull" in solid bronze after the 1987 crash, State Street Global Advisors has felt the need to taunt the bull for International Women's Day with a publicity stunt known as "fearless girl."

They should be careful what they wish for.

Source: State Street Global Advisors

Echoing the FANTASTIC FEARLESS FALL of September Vogue 2016, this is probably another complex sociometer befitting of the large-scale transition from bull to bear at Grand Supercycle degree.

The charging bull was perfect timing in 1987. No one taunted bulls then; there were very few bulls to taunt. Yet the market charged higher and never looked back.

Today's taunted bull will likely gore many more bears. That is, until everyone else becomes as fearless as the Fearless Girl.

Then the opposite of fearless will happen.

Thus the socionomic message of Fearless Girl is fearlessness itself.

Investors become fearless at highs because they are certain that markets only go up.

There is probably still some additional convincing to do beforehand.

FX:
USD smackdown. CAD, EUR, GBP sharply higher.

Treasuries:
Price rallied, yes, but didn't make it very far. And volume is drying up.

Energy:
WTI crude and NG higher. NG currently the relative strength leading.

Metals:
Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium green. Copper down over 1%.

S&P Outlook:
Dumped those 237 puts on yesterday afternoon's late rally. Got to thinking that this market may be making a correction in time and not price.

Once again the retracement is shallow thus far. The 38% level has not even been challenged.

But there's this:

This is a "six-sigma" VIX chart using Keltner bands at a Fibonacci 6.1 away from price (610 is a Fib number). Keltners are calculated using average true range, whereas Bollingers are calculated using standard deviation. So this is basically a Keltner version of price containment at six standard deviations.

I use this to plot where to cash in when a volatility event occurs. Too often it's tempting to cash in when Bollingers get pierced to the upside. This chart helps me keep some in the trade until true extremes are met.

The chart shows that vol has shrunk back to levels not seen since 2014. This means I'm a buyer of the next VIX set up on the daily chart.

2008 required settings at 9.87.

Until the daily VIX sets up, however, am remaining in dip buying mode until proven wrong.