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A look at some monthly charts is included in today’s update.
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Younger and international blog readers may not get the 1960s cultural TV reference, but I think the point is pretty clear.

What’s on Tap for this week?

There’s an odd tendency to the VIX trading during the trading day lately. The VIX most days drops during the day, even the VIX is rising overall.

Today’s tape tells a tale.
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Quiet markets mark time til summer’s end.

With the approach of an important spiral time period, the place to look is obviously the market that is behaving most emotionally and is clearly at a potential price extreme. And right now, those qualities do not describe the stock market.

I think Spiral Calendar analysis is most effective when it operates from both ends and moves inwards. What I mean by this is I could (and used to) calculate as many potential spiral dates for as many markets as possible, which resulted in some extraordinary ‘hits’ and many other ‘non events.’ I am interested in what clearly seem to be the important long-term spiral structures, and we’ve had one due in October that’s been on my radar for about a DECADE! But the other effective way to work the Spiral Calendar is to wait until one sees obvious example of irrational, lunatic behavior in the market and then pull out the handy Spiral Calendar calculator and ask – ‘where is the SC cluster that could mark the end to this madness?’ Now we did that to incredible effect in the crude oil market back in June and July 2008, and the record is right here in the archives for all to read. It was obvious with crude north of $120. a barrel that lunacy was rampant, so we consulted the spirals which then gave us, weeks in advance, two likely dates for a turn on each side of a weekend, and the current all-time high on crude oil was pinpointed TO THE DAY!!!

It’s hard to be bullish about stock direction here.

Here are the Solunar model charts for U.S. stocks and gold updated through the first quarter of 2011.

Now’s a good time to review what information is and isn’t contained in these charts.  There is no outlook for long-term trend in the solunar model. The model tells us only what is the seasonal tendency at a particular time. Example, the model shows weakness between January 7 and February 18 next year.  Just because the model drops from close to 90 down to 40 doesn’t mean that a large drop is forecast. If stocks are in a long-term uptrend at that time, then the model’s result may be that prices go sideways then.  We saw that in gold early this year. The model dropped from early January to late March. Gold did not drop, but it did take a break from it’s long-term up trend and have a sideways consolidation precisely within the time frame of the model.   Therefore, the model is best used to understand what the seasonal forces at work at any given time are, but to also understand that those forces are not the only driver of prices.  And, as I’ve said many times before, the model works amazingly for periods of time and then seems worthless at other times.  But the consistent observation I’ve made over the years is that the model does seem to work best when markets are emotional. We’ve certainly have had plenty of emotion the past two years and the models have performed exceptionally well during this time.

click chart to enlarge

click chart to enlarge

An interesting post on ZeroHedge here suggests that days when the Fed’s Permanant Open Market Operations (POMO) are active, are basically guaranteed up days, as the liquidity from the Fed’s spigot is destined to find it’s way into stocks. Perhaps. It’s worth keeping an eye on these days in the future, which are listed at the link.

And on to tonight’s discussion…
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Here’s a look at what levels are important on the weekly charts.

The dynamics between bonds, euros and eMinis are interesting this morning.
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