Well, yes, it sure would be nice to wake up every morning to a down market, but it just ain’t gonna happen. This market has years of fight left in it, so we’re going to zig and zag quite a bit. What I try to do is monitor when too much “zag” makes any meaningful “zig” unlikely. It hasn’t happened yet.

So let’s take a quick look at four charts before the opening bell.

First up is the ES, which is about 12 points higher as I’m typing this. That blue tint is really all the matters to me. The market gave me a bit of a scare yesterday after the Fed minutes, as it raced up toward that level, but it didn’t even make it as high as Friday’s peak and started a rapid descent. So, to be clear, as long as we stay under the blue horizontal, I’m OK.

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The same holds true for the NASDAQ, although as a whole the NASDAQ is much less interesting to me than just about anything else, including the small caps. The NQ has been much heartier during the counter-trend bounce.

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The bonds, of course, is where I’m most focused, and this has also been the steadiest sinker. The “big event” yesterday (the minutes) was good for this position, and 2018’s general theme continues to be lower bonds/higher rates/lower equities. I simply think bonds will be the most steadfast in showing the way.

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Finally there is crude oil, which normally gets important direction each Wednesday from the inventory report. This week, being a holiday week, is different, so they push the report 24.5 hours ahead (don’t ask me about the 1/2 hour; no clue). So instead of getting our normal “event” at 10:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday, it’s at 11:00 EST today.

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