$75 For A Chance To Die On Mars

February 17, 2015

Mish's Daily

By Mish Schneider

Before I turn my thoughts to sheep and the Chinese New Year, please allow me to see the alien radio signal out one more time.

Last week I wrote about how the volatility index (measure of fear) has beckoned like a mysterious alien radio signal that I simply cannot ignore.

Then, much to my delight, more fodder for that analogy emerged. The Dutch-based Mars One venture just announced a list of 50 men and 50 women selected from 78,000 (ranging in ages from 18-71) who will begin to compete for the chance to take a one-way trip to Mars. The contestants will compete on a reality-TV show with the goal of narrowing it down to 24 prospective crew members for missions to Mars starting as early as 2024. Winners will be expected to start up a permanent colony.

“Last year an MIT study concluded that the venture's plan to send humans to Mars and keep them alive was "overly optimistic" on technical grounds.” NBC News.

And that’s the rub. As the market goes into orbit with many bulls on board (myself included), I still wonder if the persistently strong Volatility Index (VXX) is the market’s way of saying to the “overly optimistic”; “Bulls, you’ll die on Mars”, technically speaking.

For now, I maintain that until the end of June, we have a bullish bias with a market that will have small rallies met by selling and then followed by periods of consolidation.

Tuesday, after a long weekend, hard to equate the price action as a rally per se, yet with the higher close, we did see selling on extremely light volume that could also lead one to conclude, the market consolidated at the highs.

S&P 500 (SPY) 220? Maybe if holds now over 206

Russell 2000 (IWM) Another new high

Dow (DIA) Nearly matched the 180.71 high from December 26th

Nasdaq (QQQ) Another new multi-year high

XLF (Financials) 24.90 the January Calendar Range high, 24.37 the support-needs to participate

KRE (Regional Banks) 41.06 the January Calendar Range high

SMH (Semiconductors) 56.64 resistance from December

IYT (Transportation) 205.16 January high

IBB (Biotechnology) 322.46 the January 6-month high which cleared already but now becomes pivotal

XRT (Retail) Inside day and I suspect has lots more to go to the upside

IYR (Real Estate) Inside day and confused by strong market and firming rates

ITB (US Home Construction) Another new multi-year high