evening wrap, may 22

market vibes

“There’s value in doing things that scare you.” Roald Dahl

Apart from bitcoin and bonds, the markets in NY wandered on light volume as usual. Stocks tried to mollify their discontent with yesterday’s bond auction and failed. Gold traded on either side of $3300 in a choppy and featureless range, and the dollar was narrowly higher for no reason at all. A shallow dip in platinum closed up on the day. Crude was $1.00 lower early this morning and rallied to -$0.50 by the pit close.

The Big Beautiful Bill passed the House. Therefore, debt service, or the battle to assure it, is better than half over. Now it’s on to Cincinnati the Senate, where it will be debated and passed by July, according to the present narrative.

In the markets

CBOT 30-year bonds posted a solid rally on the highest non-roll volume since the first week of April. The 30-year generic yield settled at 5.04%. Bonds may not be the best long on the board, but they’re probably not the best short either.

Was there some cosmetic activity this morning? If I were Bessent, I’d be jamming the shorts down here, hard… and I’d keep jamming them.

Bitcoin maintained a very narrow range at the highs all day. IBIT made an ATH on May 17. XBT spot made an ATH yesterday, but futures missed an ATH by about $600 in daily CQG data today. Open interest and volume decelerated slightly.

There are always doubts in a murky environment like this, especially with an uncertain market like crypto. However, ignoring the noise, BTC prices are clinging to their highs and trending, and that implies an imbalance of buyers below the market.

Micro strategy appears to offloading some ballast. He earned it.

S&P struggled to manage a 35-handle gain for most of the session but gave it all back in the last 30 minutes. Five percent Treasury yields, bitcoin doing nicely, gold… are all competing with stocks for AUM, which may be why so few people are in the theater watching the “stock market” movie.

Oil is lower in the post-close, and development is still rangebound on low volume. Open interest was up, based on the close on Wednesday, but it could have been spreads or cracks.

It’s always hard to infer a day’s activity in petroleum open interest if prices are not trending. Heat and RBOB OI hasn’t moved in a month. Cracks are just as flat. Dec Red Dec has been weak, settling at -$1.06 tonight.

Gold had an outside day down in a $79.00 range. $3346 is probably too high for gold right now. $3240 is probably too low. We have a range, better to accept it than deny it.

My vibe

I wrote a few thoughts about the markets this evening and deleted them. I wrote something else, read it and deleted that, too. It happens. Better to say nothing sometimes than say something that is actually nothing anyway.

I’ll see you in the morning… good luck in Asia!

JJ

If you like reading market vibes please hit the like button, and type in your e mail below to become a subscriber.

Share selectively with friends and colleagues and follow me on X @Alyosha745

Charts and data CQG and Bloomberg

Market vibes is not a registered investment advisor, and comments are for informational use only. Any mention of a particular security, index, derivative, or other instrument is NOT a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold that security, index, derivative, or any other instrument. Market vibes makes no representations as to the accuracy of data or any attributions.

.