Tuesday’s sell-off wasn’t enough to spook bulls.

Even the rather hawkish Fed Minutes didn’t dent bulls’ enthusiasm since it was deemed “old news”.

The featured player today was an outsized rally in crude oil as inventories showed an over 4% decline in inventories. That led to a large spike in prices and allowed high market correlations between stocks and crude to return to fore after a short-term departure.

More curious was the large rallies in Pfizer (PFE) and Allergan (AGN) after the two companies called their merger off. One would at first glance expect one or both company’s shares to tumble but that was definitely not the case as both stocks rallied sharply. Allergan announced they would look to sell-off a subsidiary and Pfizer no doubt caused a short short-squeeze as stock dilution fears were undone.

Those two forces, oil and drug stocks, forced markets higher.  

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 quite light on the rally and breadth per the WSJ was positive while Money Flow was mixed and odd frankly.

XLV WEEKLY

NYMO DAILY

The NYMO is a market breadth indicator that is based on the difference between the number of advancing and declining issues on the NYSE. When readings are +60/-60 markets are extended short-term.

NYSI DAILY

The McClellan Summation Index is a long-term version of the McClellan Oscillator. It is a market breadth indicator, and interpretation is similar to that of the McClellan Oscillator, except that it is more suited to major trends. I believe readings of +1000/-1000 reveal markets as much extended.

VIX WEEKLY

The VIX is a widely used measure of market risk and is often referred to as the “investor fear gauge”. Our own interpretation has changed due to a variety of new factors including HFTs, new VIX linked ETPs and a multitude of new products to leverage trading and change or obscure prior VIX relevance.