Holiday trade continues to be on the light side as buyers push markets higher.  For the seventh straight day we have seen the market close out the day with gains.  Turmoil in Greece continues to heat up with fears over a “Grexit” continue to bubble up.  Yet, even with falling oil prices markets here in the United States continue to see higher prices.  Sellers simply have been non-existent and given the holiday season we are likely to see this continue through the week.  Given the feather light volume over the past few trading sessions a pull back with volume would not be unexpected.  In the meantime, stick with the plan and respect trading signals.

Sentiment from last week grew more bullish week over week.  In the AAII survey those expecting the market to be lower six months from now fell below 20% to 18.87%.  Lowest since early November of this year where bears fell to 15.05%.  Bulls jumped to 50.94%, but this is a normal occurrence for this market for some time now.  NAAIM Exposure index eclipsed 90% ending last week at 90.59% long exposure.  Not a single manager held any bearish exposure with many choosing to allocate 100% to equities.  The last time the NAAIM saw exposure above 90% was early June of this year.  Bears seem to be nearing extreme levels, but bulls continue to hang below extreme levels.  Interesting times and given the markets movements over the holidays we should not see any extreme moves in either direction.

Volume was higher on the session, but it was well below its 50 day moving average.  While volume can be used to identify strength in a single stock it has become increasingly unreliable indicator.  For whatever the reason, low volume is this way and trying to figure out the why is not going to be helpful in your trading.  We can certainly lay blame on the removal of the uptick rule for shorts and high frequency trading, but find the absolute reason why is a waste of time and will distract you from your mission.  You can check out this post to find out more.  In the meantime, we need to focus on price action and continuing to ride our winning stocks

Unfortunately for market participants in the “office” this week we do not get reprieve from this holiday trade as we do not get an early close on Wednesday.  A few years back at least we had the fiscal cliff to keep things interesting.  We do have the situation in Greece and falling crude oil prices, but none of these situations are creating much panic.  Despite the boring sessions we cannot let that distract us from executing our strategy.  Keep your focus.

By the end of this week there will be a plethora of 2015 predictions.  Majority, if not all of them will not pan out.  However, for your entertainment we will leave you with this chart from Zerohedge.