Bittersweet Chips

Despite impressive action in the semiconductor space this morning off LRCX TXN and XLNX all rallying sharply after last evening's earnings reports, not to mention INTC this morning too, the rest of the tape seems a bit too sluggish, all things considering. 

Specifically, one would think with a critical part of the tech sector like chips rallying, bulls would become galvanized to wrestle away any hope from bears for an imminent market rollover. Instead, we have the QQQ fading well off session highs as I write this and threatening to flip red, with the Dow and S&P already flashing red.

Perhaps the bulls scenario here is that we are simply marking time before some type of government shutdown deal is announced, squeezing equities higher as a knee-jerk reaction before we deal with the aftermath. But that scenario is also rather obvious at this point, with the longest shutdown in history already having given markets plenty of time to consider various endpoints. 

In the meantime, I am looking to see if bulls can regain some better broad market momentum by day's end to make the rally in chips truly as sweet as it initially seemed this morning. 

Elsewhere, Brazilian oil giant Petrobras seems to be flying under-the-radar. On the PBR daily chart, below, note the tight "handle" as crude oil flips green this morning. Regardless of your political stance on Bolsonaro, if any, it is hard to deny that his home country's stocks have greeted him well since we became elected.