The tout sheets were full of excited pieces about how strong Black Friday retail sales were. This was somewhat dampened by Wal-Mart’s warning that November sales would only be up 0.7%, which of course is a decline in real terms. However, that was quickly dismissed as WMT’s failure to discount and promote as aggressively as last year.

AP eventually reported that sales had fallen the rest of the weekend (year-over-year) with the effect that the weekend was rather unimpressive. But by then the market’s attention had turned to other bullish data and this, too, was swept under the rug.

In the meantime, S&P commercials are as short as they ever get. NYSE specialists are in the same position. This is usually not bullish. Crude is currently $49.85 and the euro is $1.3289. Looks to me as if we are getting to the “drop” part. But what do I know?