Stocks poised for acceleration?

While Europe has had the Italian PM Conte speech as an axis of interest this morning, there isn't really a comparable event in the U.S. Well, there's the Tesla shareholders meeting, so I suppose one could draw some parallels between pie-in-the-sky fiscal projections, but it's hard to distill too many macro ramifications from the Elon Musk show.

The SPX managed a close through that key 2742 level and overnight at least appears intent on batting on. Of course, it wouldn't be surprising to see a retest of the threshold at some point (not least because it's only a few bps away!), but if it holds then we should see an acceleration in the rally; most upside moves this year have seen a rally of 3% or more over a two-week span.

Equity operators will be pleased to see that fixed income has settled down a bit today, perhaps helped by the ongoing correction in crude. While central bankers will generally tell you that they look through oil-based inflation, it's hard to avoid ripple effects from large sustained rises in crude; in any event, breakevens are clearly impacted by energy prices.

A moderation in the pace of gains will surely be a help to household disposable income; after all, when my usually oblivious 14-year-old starts commenting on the price of petrol, you know that it's starting to bite.

Read more:

• US – Iran – Iraq tension remain the main driver of the stock market today
• How top market players on Wall St think 2020 will look like on financial markets
• Money Flow before the start of the new trading week
• Cincinnati Financial Corporation (CINF.US) -Opportunity for long positions
• Asia stocks gain as Fed signals no rate cuts in 2020