Chopped

As difficult as it is to believe and trade through on a daily basis, the Nasdaq has indeed gone entirely sideways for more than four months at this point, as illustrated by the Nasdaq-100 Index weekly chart, below. 

The bullish interpretation of this action is that we have corrected "through time," rather than through price, and that an inevitable upside breakout will materialize in due time. After all, the market never seems to follow-through lower and continues to shrug off tons of bearish headlines, technical setups, bearish indicators, and news developments. In addition, another bullish talking point is that "they" simply will not permit stocks to fall before the midterm elections in early-November.  

But these arguments seem to be rather popular, perhaps too much. After all, demand for Nasdaq puts is at some of the lowest levels we have seen in quite some time. In addition, the weakness in housing and consumer discretionary stocks has been dismisses as trivial, rather than a blinking red light warning of danger.

All of these factors continue to have me leaning towards a complacent market ripe to finally succumb to seasonal weakness in the coming weeks, especially once we get through options expiration tomorrow. 

Finally, note the junior gold miners (GDXJ ETF) and silver miners (SIL ETF) are leading the precious complex gains today. I view this as quite bullish for the metals and miners, since junior gold miners and silver miners are considered the highest beta and riskiest of the lot. Thus, if buyers are willing to take on that additional risk after a Fed rate hike, it likely means the gold thesis of a Fed behind the curve (i.e. needing to hike further and faster) is correct. 

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