The Standard and Poors 500 Index (SPX) fell out of bed on Friday, reacting to news of new tariffs being applied to China. SPX traded as low as 2762 before bouncing to close at 2780. Interestingly, SPX opened on Monday at precisely 2780, so we closed the week absolutely flat. The trading volume spike Friday was due to options expiration, so that may be ignored. Trading volume remains lackluster, running near the 50-day moving average (dma) and trending slightly lower.

The Russell 2000 Index (RUT) followed its big brothers and traded down on Friday but recovered even more strongly than SPX. RUT closed Friday at 1684, down less than a dollar. Thursday’s close at 1685 was another all-time high for RUT and Friday’s close reaffirmed that high.

The NASDAQ Composite index also traded lower on Friday and then recovered much of its losses, closing down 15 points at 7746. NASDAQ set another all-time high on Thursday, closing at 7761, not too far above Friday’s close. NASDAQ turned in the strongest weekly return of the major market indices, gaining 99 points or 1.3% from Monday’s open to Friday’s close.

The S&P 500 index’s volatility index, VIX, closed Friday at 12.0%, roughly flat for the week (opened Monday at 12.4%).

The big question is the widely accepted rationale for Friday’s down day, trade tariffs and the fear of a “trade war”. Headlines from financial articles include, “Why the trade war is going to get worse”, and “the conflict will escalate into a technological cold war”. Those are scary headlines, but the market clearly doesn’t take it seriously. SPX recovered Friday’s losses nicely and the other major market indices remain at or near all-time highs. The low level of volatility doesn’t suggest much concern about trade wars on the part of the large institutional traders.

In my opinion, we have an interesting market. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem like we have fully recovered from the February correction. The market remains nervous, expecting the other shoe to drop. On the other hand, the trading action is decidedly bullish. Even on days like Friday, where it seemed like a very negative day, most of the losses were recovered and volatility remained flat. 

How should we trade this market? For your non-directional trades, position the trade with more safety margin to the up side, and take more risk on the down side. This takes advantage of the largely sideways trading pattern, but counts on the underlying bullish trend.

Our Conservative Income service remains up about 12% for the year, so there is a lot to be said for conservative option selling. In this market, the turtle beats the rabbit.

For all of your trades, position your stops close. This is a “better safe than sorry” market.