"Will they, or won't they" - that's the question on every trader's mind.
In the last two days, massive buy orders driven by pension reallocation trades sent stocks soaring (something even Bloomberg now admits was the catalyst for the surge) in late day trading, and with less than 2 hours left to go in today's session, all traders wanted to know is whether pensions funds would make it a three-peat.
And while we don't know if it is indeed pensions, or someone merely frontrunning today's forced buying - or perhaps just pretending to be them - at precisely 2:05pm, the NYSE TICK - an indicator showing relative strength of buy and sell orders - just hit 1,735, the second highest reading on record, as an absolutely gargnatuan buy order hit...
Putting today's massive buy program burst in context, within just 15 minutes, we had three TICK prints that were 1,631 or higher. As a reminder, yesterday's high TICK print - which helped send the Dow nearly 900 points higher - of 1,662 was the 4th largest buy order of all time. That means that today alone we have had three absolutely massive buy programs all within just minutes of each other.
While this was a little early considering yesterday the pension bid emerged at precisely 2:30pm, perhaps pension fund managers decided to be "less predictable" today and start the buying earlier. Alternatively, it may be a trader posing as a "pension", hoping to spark upward momentum into which to dump positions.
In any case, keep a close eye on the TICK - if this is a fake breakout, we may see some truly historic downward TICK prints over the next 90 minutes.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-28/here-they-come-stock-spike-second-biggest-buy-order-history-hits?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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