Stuffing attempts ahead of Thanksgiving – failed to light-up excitement, as it was pretty obvious (by a factor of 10) how they tried to trap some hedge funds holding the ‘most-shorted-stocks’ which were up more than the overall market. 

By the time it was all finished, the market was virtually unchanged and the S&P drifted a bit lower in late trading. Sentiment and volatility got sort of complacent in a way that is only slightly unusual on this day before Thanksgiving; with late fading being exactly what we expected; given a suspected ‘absence of bids’. 

The general sentiment is that geopolitical tensions have eased; but that’s only true regarding Russia coming forth and saying they won’t go to war with Turkey over the shoot-down of the SU-24. In an earlier intraday comment I remarked it was interesting, not only because there’s precedent of Syria shooting-down an old Turkish F-4 Phantom which crashed in the Mediterranean just several years ago; but that Erdogan at the time said ‘nobody would do that for an incursion in neighboring airspace that is very brief. That’s the opposite of his tack this time. 

Also the Russian pilot complained that an F-16 is far faster than his SU-24; so it would be protocol to pull alongside and give visual hand-signals should another fighter pilot ‘believe’ radio communications had failed or that the intruder was in foreign airspace. The reality is Turkey was protecting the Turkman faction that’s fighting Assad, and operates in that area, while nobody mentions the affiliation that group has had with al Qaeda not ISIS; but basically branches of a similar tree. Just thought this worth noting, as the US and Turkey are supporting them; and yes those were the guys screaming ‘Allah Akbar’ after they murdered the 1st pilot, who had otherwise safely ejected; but killed by them on the ground. It is sadly characteristic of Islamists who never imagined a Geneva Convention (on prisoners, which would make their killing the pilot and everything all these assorted barbarians have done to mankind essentially homicidal war-crimes).