First and foremost, today is a festive day at the New York Stock Exchange, as it is the 98th Annual Tree Lighting. If you are in NYC come by for the festivities or check out the Livestream (here). After a strong start to November equity markets sold off through the back half of the month. The losses in the S&P 500for the month were pretty mild with the index ending down less than 1%. However, the Dow and the Russell 2k ended lower by ~4%, with a good portion of those losses coming since last Friday. The day-to-day volatility is continuing today with equity markets gapping higher at the open. There isn’t a clear catalyst for today’s bounce. Yesterday the early weakness was blamed on the interview with Moderna’s CEO and today BioNTech’s CEO sounded more optimistic about vaccine efficacy which is being cited by some for the strength. As good a reason as any is that stocks had reached some short-term oversold conditions and were approaching key support levels. Today is very similar to Monday’s action in that the market gapped right back to where it opened on the previous and has been unable to clear the previous day’s highs. The bounce was broad based but it doesn’t feel like there is a lot of conviction in the move. As a matter of fact, since I’ve started typing this up the downside momentum has accelerated. Some of this weakness could be related to the continued discord in Washington as the House Freedom Caucus is urging McConnell withhold support for the continuing resolution unless vaccine mandate funding is removed. The length of the stop gap funding is still in question. Then around 1:40 there were reports that the first Omicron case has been discovered in California. As we head to print equities are off of session highs with the S&P is up 25pts to 4,592 (+0.5% HOD - 4,653), the Dow is up 85pts to 34,570 (+0.2% - HOD ~35k). Meanwhile the Russell 2k is down 10pts to 2,188 (-0.5%). It was up >2% earlier failing just below its 200d (~2,260).

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Calendar for 11/29 - 12/3