Watching, Waiting, Wondering

Marc Dupee will be out of the
office until November 10. In his absence this column is being written by
TradersWire’s Duke Heberlein.

The majority of market participants stood on the
sidelines Tuesday, choosing instead to wait out the speculation surrounding the
U.S. elections and the race for the presidency between Al Gore and George W.
Bush. Many are debating which of the two would be more beneficial in office for
the markets, and are waiting for the speculation to subside before gauging the
market’s reaction.

The stock index futures all reflected the reticence of
players, as all remained unchanged for the most part, with the December S&P
futures
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, NASDAQ 100 futures
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and Dow futures
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all losing around .5% of their respective contract values.

Foreign currencies enjoyed a small rally against the
December dollar index futures
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, as all except one finished positive
ending the regular futures trading session. The Canadian dollar
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 was
the lone dissenter, dropping .0080 to head into Globex trading at .6533. The
British
pound
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was the biggest gainer of the bunch, adding .0054 to 1.4356.

Energies rallied to the upside across the board, trying
to repair some of the technical damage their contracts have endured over the
past few weeks. Crude oil
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added more than 50 cents per barrel to its
price, up .54 at 33.40. Natural gas
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continues to pull back off its lows, and both heating oil
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 and
unleaded gasoline
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in spite of being up Tuesday, appear to have kept
their current downtrends intact.

In the grain markets, corn
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, off the Momentum-5
List
, continued to move higher, up 1 1/4 at 214 3/4. Soybeans
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finished in the positve but appear to be ready to fall out of a pullback from
lows. Meanwhile December wheat
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took out the low from Monday on its
daily chart and looks vulnerable to additional downside pressure. 

Pork bellies
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appear to be following through
after busting out above their 20- and 50-day moving averages the past two days,
and December lean hogs
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seem to be forming an inverted
head-and-shoulders pattern on its converging 20- and 50-day MA’s.  Live
cattle
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reversed to the downside and closed poorly, down .700 to
72.350.

Finally, soft commodites traded like the rest of the
market – treading water with little change. The lone exception was the November
orange juice
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spiking up on the largest trading range of the past
four days, up 2.55 to 71.50 and breaking a downward trendline in the process.
The rest continued with the ho-hum attitude of everybody else, keeping their
downtrends intact.