Market skittish over Fed rate decision Thursday

This week’s big news comes from south of the border, notes Prab Sagoo, associate director at Nasdaq Advisory Services, in his weekly commentary.

Highlights:

• The Federal Reserve is due to announce its interest rate decision on Thursday. This will be the defining headline for the week and all investors will be cautiously positioning themselves ahead of this. The market remains unsure of the outcome, which adds to the skittishness we’ve seen where early rallies have been quickly sold into. We will likely see more of this.

Read: Bearish sentiment growing

• Chinese growth worries persist and continue to weigh on overall market sentiment as industrial production data missed estimates, though retail sales did come in ahead of expectations.

• The latest short interest data for August indicates that there is a divergence of bearishness between Canadian and U.S. listings. Looking at the large caps (TSX60 Index members, non-OTC), bearish bets on U.S. listings increased 4x more than on their TSX listing counterparts during August. Though Canadians continue to be more bearish YTD.

• CFTC data showed that for the week through Sept. 8, fund managers cut their net long bets against S&P 500 futures contracts while equity fund speculations increased their net short positions.

• Additional volatility is expected Friday as the TSX indices (and other S&P indices) undergo quarterly rebalancing.

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The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.