March 5, 2017 The Week Ahead

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Week after week, traders are all asking the same question… when is this market going to pullback? Well, we didn’t see a whole lot of upside during the week. However, the market SPDR S&P 500 is up 5.39% over the last 30 days. With earnings mostly behind us, the attention will focus on an FOMC meeting which is 11 days from now, and politics out of Washington.

Where is the volatility?

The VIX continues to hangout below 11. On Friday, the VIX closed at 10.96. Based on some of the volatility estimators that we look at, the SPDR S&P 500 has a 20-day volatility of 7% compared to its median of 11% over the last 3 years.

Moving on to gold and oil.

Crude oil futures closed the week closing, lower at -1.16%. In precious metals, gold futures prices finished the week lower, dropping -1.79%
Now, here is how some of the other closely followed ETFs did on the week: United States Oil Fund (USO) -1.49%, iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) -2.01%, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) -1.85%.

One of the main highlights over the last week was the IPO of SNAP Inc., the parent company of Snapchat. A successful IPO to say the least, the company has a market cap of $31.35B, after gaining 59% it’s first week.

Here is a list of some events that traders will be following:

Key Economic Data
7 March 2017- International Trade 8:30 AM ET,
8 March 2017- EIA Petroleum Status Report 10:30 AM ET
9 March 2017- ECB Central Bank (ECB) policy decision at 7:45 AM ET, Jobless Claims 8:30 AM ET
10 March 2017- Employment Situation 8:30 AM ET

Key Earnings
6 March 2017- ASNA, MEET, THO
7 March 2017- DKS, MIK, NAV, HRB, NMBL, URBN, WIFI, ZAGG
8 March 2017- CIEN, EXPR, BOBE, HOV, OA, SMRT, VAL, CWH, RATE, VVUS, UNFI, WATT
9 March 2017- FCEL, PRTY, SIG, SSYS, ZUMZ, FNSR, FRPT, LOCO, PAY, ULTA

Key Events
6 March 2017- Citigroup 22nd Annual Global Property CEO Conference (runs till ⅜); Cowen 37th Annual Healthcare Conference (runs till ⅜); Deutsche Bank 25th Annual, Media, Internet and Telecom Conference runs till (⅜); Raymond James 38th Annual Institutional Investors Conference (runs till ⅜)

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March 2, 2017 Market Wrap Up

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The markets sold off today on rather light volume. However, today’s headlines were dominated by Snap. The much anticipated IPO traded over 216M shares on its opening day, closing up more than 40%, at 24.48. With that said, this was the largest IPO in over 2 years.

Strong earnings performers included: Abercrombie & Fitch Company (ANF), Burlington Stores (BURL), and Intrexon (XON)

Weak earnings performers included: Costco Wholesale (COST), Anheuser-Busch (BUD), and Shake Shack (SHAK)

ETF Performers: United States Oil Fund (USO) -2.02%, iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT) -0.43%, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) -1.23%.

On the options front, we saw large call buying activity in HRG Group Inc (HRG), which traded 5.2 times normal option volume. In addition, we saw heavy put buying in Fastenal Company (FAST), which traded 2.6 times normal option volume.

There are no major events on the schedule for tomorrow.

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