The Futures Fake-Out

Is someone having some fun with these stock futures? Are they so thin that they can be whipped up or down on a whim?

At times in the past I have railed against the predictive value of these instruments. But they usually have some relevance to the day's trading. Now they seem to have none at all other than for their total fake-out value.

Take Friday's session. The futures traded down big after the employment report , indicating that the session would be quite awful. Boy was that wrong. If the futures spooked you out early on you were fooled out of a pretty good show for the bulls.

I don't know what will happen today, but I know that these futures are signaling a dreadful session. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there has to be a reason for a dreadful session, and I can't see one from anything that I have checked out so far.

Our markets have grown increasingly thin and skittish and unpredictable of late. These futures only compound the unpredictability.