An unusual mid-day update: While the corporate MSM is giving wide play to the fact that Russia is now urging the Syrians to give up their chemical weapons to international control, a move which would defuse the situation ahead of Kerry one-week deadline, we are faced with an even more desperate reported moved by the rebel forces, which are desperate to drag the US/West into their conflict as al Qaeda’s hand in the background continues. Specifically I’d refer you to the RT report claiming “Syrian rebels plan chem attack on Israel from [inside] Assad-controlled territories.”
Such a move would, indeed be desperate, but should it occur, the Israelis would immediately launch a counter-attack, which would then suck in Assad’s main forces, and the US, in turn, would be sucked in to side with Israel and about all that’d be left then would be the open question as to when to put on flash-goggles.
But for today, things have taken a more reasonable track: The Russians want settlement, Obama will be able to blame congress for inaction (they’re really getting good at that) and absent the outbreak of hostilities, Obama will indeed score a major win if the Syrians turn over chemical weps to international supervision.
The markets haven’t missed the action, either, and this morning the Dow popped up more than a hundred points and it’s looking like the S&P might very well be on its way to Robin Landry’s S&P 1,685 kind of level.
As of update time, the Dow was up nearly one percent, as war is always a short-term negative, and if any of this peace talk gets legs our, trading model (results of which were shared with Peoplenomics readers this past weekend) will continue their impressive string. I keep thinking I ought to enter it in some of those competitions, but who needs it?
Like all trading models, this one seems to work, but when any model gets too popular, they stop working as well, and we certainly don’t want that.
More tomorrow morning at our usual “What am I doing up at this hour?” report time.