Yes, these maxims are often wrong, and they become trite, but it seems bears may be lurking anxious to seize the opportunity.

But we’ve seen since October 2015 and much of 2016 bears saw opportunities come and go amid serious volatility.

Fundamental market views certainly support bears since October 2015.

Declining global economic data and earnings have left stocks overprice when measured by sky high Pes and so forth. Yet cheap central bank money has supported bulls as has unproductive massive stock buybacks. The 8-year refrain has supported a “more money than brains” environment.

Stocks continued to fall Wednesday although the obligatory 2:15 PM Buy Program Express (see 5-minute SPY chart below) helped to stem losses.  

Economic data Wednesday was mixed overall with some key reports weak. Significantly, the much watched ADP Employment Report fell sharply only 156K new jobs vs prior 194K; Productivity fell to -1.00% while Labor Costs rose to 0.4%, a serious negative; The Trade Deficit fell to $-40.4B vs prior $-47.00B; both ISM & PMI Services Index gain slightly while Factory Orders recovered from major declines the previous period from –1.9% vs current 1.1%.

Oil Inventories climbed to 2.8M bbls vs prior 2.M bbls. Oil reacted modestly positive as traders felt it might be worse. Still we await Thursday’s government report. With the dollar stronger once again this day gold and other commodity sectors remained lower.

Elsewhere the feisty Chinese government decided to trump Trump and the Fed by lowering again the Yuan’s value to stimulate a better trade position. Should Trump win, this would be fun.

Below is the heat map from Finviz reflecting those ETF market sectors moving higher (green) and falling (red). Dependent on the day (green) may mean leveraged inverse or leveraged short (red).

Volume was modestly higher and breadth per the WSJ was negative once again.

Chart Of The Day

That’s all folks! For Wednesday that is.

Let’s see what happens.