Equities at or near the high; same with X/JPY

The market is showing signs of weakness. Nasdaq and Russell are failing to show leadership, with poor breadth and price performance, relative to the SP500. Longer-term, the volume recruited into the March-April bounce has been very, very poor.

This chart illustrates that massive rallies that come immediately following massive declines are usually bear-market rallies (in red). The blue dots are the dates of significant market bottoms, which have tended to occur following moderate declines into the ultimate lows, followed by moderate initial bounces off those lows (base building).

This chart shows that significant rallies off bottoms - on volume that fell relative to the volume that accompanied the immediately preceeding sell-off - have tended to be bear market rallies (red dots), not starts of new bull-markets, which saw moderate gains accompanied by an increase in volume (blue dots).