Bulls Try to Balance a Needed Rest With More Upside

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The bad news is back to being good news. A weak jobs number and an uptick in the employment rate fueled a rally in the ES from 4331.25 at 8:30 a.m. ET to 4383.25 at 10:00. 

It's all so mechanical, it's insane and with ~95% of the volume on the NYSE coming as some form of program trading, the markets basically go from looking horrible to skyrocketing. The S&P 500 rallied all five days last week, gaining 240 points or 5.85%. 

It just doesn't make sense, but that's how the new-world trading order works. 

As you know, we talk about the “guys with the better seats” — but who are they? They are the really big institutional firms paying billions to basically front-run the public's order flow. In conjunction with paying the exchanges billions and also being market makers, they make prices for many of the products you trade. For that, you get “free commissions.” But is it really free? No, it's not free — and nothing ever truly is. Anyone who thinks that zero commission is free doesn't understand where the prices they trade off come from. 

It is a very unlevel playing field and here is another disgusting example. It's crazy the advantage government officials have over the public. If we were in a position to take advantage of something like that, we would surely go to jail.

Earnings out this week: CEG, GILD, UBER, OXY, DVN, EBAY, DIS, BIIB, WBD