It was a short week but the takeaway is that every one of the time windows and cycle points were violated. I haven’t seen a situation like that on the daily timeframe in a long time. Even in China, which had the most bearish possible setup of all, we had violation.

The square root of the top of the SSE is 71.95. The actual top is 5178.10. When it comes to cycle work, some of these calculations are well hidden. Two weeks ago, on the 72nd week, it came close to being a perfect doji. Wait, 72 weeks off a top at 71.95 with a doji? There was a good chance there could’ve been a reversal. But it wasn’t as the week turned higher. You already know I’ve categorized for you the different possibilities during the past two weeks elsewhere. While we are looking at China, let’s take this one step further.

Yeah, the market is strong enough to invalidate this sequence of timing relationships. But here’s what bothers me about this chart. Look at the pitchfork channel. It is barely able to hold the lower bowl, so to speak. When it comes to Andrews, the best way to understand the channel lines is to think about The Weather Channel. Wherever you are reading this, you know there is a Jetstream over your continent. You see the different atmospheric conditions and meteorologists are able to come up with a forecast based on a variety of factors. That being said, in the longterm, the price action can’t even carry itself in the channel, which is the mean. Go back to the early part of 2016 and the price action started lifting in the channel but has spent the rest of the year struggling to even hold the lower parallel line. That’s a concern in the bigger picture, just not today.

As you know, the markets have been without the election black swan and have been on a rally ever since Nov. 9. That’s fine, but I also find it hard to believe they can sustain without a bump in the road from now to Christmas. We might not have had an election black swan but there will be a recount in 3 key battleground states. This is the kind of thing I thought would happen in the heat of the battle, not after the new president-elect was nearly one-third of the way into the transition period, its odd to say the least. This is a developing story and while most election experts believe the outcome won’t change, this has been the most bizarre election season in the history of the republic. I refuse to rule anything out. I don’t know what would interrupt this freight train of a market, but I do believe there should be an interruption.

The big news of the week will be the OPEC meeting on Wednesday. They are either coming to a deal or they aren’t. Reuters reported on Friday that the Saudis will not attend a meeting of non-OPEC producers on Monday where production levels will be discussed. That caused a big drop on the oil chart. On Sunday night I saw a report on Twitter that a Saudi airstrike killed a dozen civilians in Yemen’s Hudaydah area. This is part of the fight against the Houthi rebels who are a proxy for the Iranians.

Ever since Sept. 28, rumors have been floated about a potential OPEC deal to cut production. The OPEC ministers have taken a page out of the Fed playbook. The Fed doesn’t have to raise rates to get a reaction out of the market, all they have to do is talk about it. OPEC has learned they could get prices to rise if they threaten the cut production.

But if you look at the chart, you’ll see this has worked only half the time because prices are basically where they were on September 28. The low on that date was 45.27 and the low on Sunday night was 45.14. But we all know they peaked in the 52 handle on Oct. 19.

Here’s the problem I’ve been having with this OPEC business since September. The Iranians and Saudis do not like each other. Their disdain for each other on political/religious issues outweighs the common good of doing business together. It’s like the Godfather where every few years the crime families would throw good business sense to the wayside and clean out all the bad blood. I would’ve thought they could’ve bought the rumor and sold the news on a deal but it’s not working out that way. Now it looks like they could sell the rumor and buy the news.