The following chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average sets out an example of the legal concept of exigent circumstances. It needs just one remaining element to result in a call to action, a gap hard down Open in response to some global fiasco. I'll explain further below the chart.
DJI
First of all, as of mid-way through this weekend, there is no hard evidence or reason to believe that anything untoward is brewing to cause such an event on or before Monday. Nonetheless, remember that it was only a couple of weeks ago when the biggest individual investor brokerage houses in North America couldn't open because of panic in the financial markets in response to a 12% decline in Japan. That ended up being a nothing-burger, a false alarm, a, "buying opportunity". We should only be so lucky next time. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic there there are stories like these popping up this weekend:
Second of all, that is an ominous looking DJI chart, as is this next one, taken from my Weekend Update on Saturday, showing a bearish resolution pending of the action starting in mid-July and culminating this past Friday:
QQQ
Five waves down as Wave 1 from the mid-July, "Wave 5 at multiple degrees of trend" top, followed by a two-week Wave 2 Fib retracement, stopping so far right at area of the preceding Wave iv, leading to a set-up for a Wave 3 hard down in the week ahead.
I titled my Weekend Update to subscribers, The Sword of Damocles for a host of reasons, technical like the charts above, and/or fundamental because of headlines like those above, because that is what how the market needs to be approached into the end of the year. I also included this quote from John F. Kennedy that seems especially appropriate in light of those above headlines:
"Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.” - John F. Kennedy, United Nations, 1961
Bottom Line: Any trader who thinks the markets will open after such a catastrophic set of events as implied by those headlines is delusional. It spells out endgame. We can at best hope that there will be a build-up of tensions first*, with escalations along the way allowing the market to tank, crashes and circuit breakers to kick in, and most important of all, enough trading sessions to work the mayhem into massive options gains AND enough of the financial system left standing to withdraw gains and stash it all away, including ourselves and loved ones, for what, I don't know, nor do I want to know whatever the hell comes next.
*See headlines above.
Oh yea, one last chart:
Gold Futures - Long Term (Monthly)
Gold was up $50 on Friday, breaking out to an all time high: What does gold know? Best we keep an eye on it via some longer term GLD calls.