I predict that this week's SP500 close will be higher than today's close and there will be articles around the theme of "rising rates due to strong economy is a good thing"
Now that I have officially made the forecast, expect the opposite to happen!

Notes from FOMC releases & Powell's press conference:
Rate hikes will start soon (March). The fed fund rate will become the primary tool of Fed monetary policy. Expected will be gradual +0.25% rate hikes, but +0.50% hikes were not ruled out.
The QEs will be reduced in February & should end in early-March.
The Fed balance sheet reductions will start (around mid-year) after the rate hikes begin (in March) & will run in the background. The MBS will be gone faster & entirely at some point. The balance sheet will shrink substantially to a level needed for Fed operations.
The labor market is very strong. The current inflation is also very high but is expected to decline. People on fixed-income are affected more by high inflation. Less fiscal stimulus is expected. The Fed will remain flexible in its policies & actions. The yield-curve is normal now & will be watched. It will be a year of tightening. Risks include high inflation, various threats to economic expansion, Covid-19 factors, supply-chain disruptions (that should gradually clear), Europe, etc.
The stock market has been very volatile this week. It was up strong on Wednesday morning but turned down after the press conference.
Additional statements were issues on 1) long-term monetary policy & strategies, 2) principles for Fed balance sheet reduction.
LINK

“... somehow I don't think this will end well.”
Yep. Nuts
Just another bizarre day. Haven’t liked the market action for a while. Missed most of the Fed news today. Need to catch up. Powell’s mumbling something on Bloomberg … DKNG pulled back from +17% to only +9%. The DOW which has been up 300 points or more today is negative 50 as I write. Hmm …
Gold’s getting mildly slammed today (off $33.00). But it’s still $1818 - far ahead of the $1700 it flirted with last year. I’m hanging on to DKNG this time around because I have some good hedges in place if all H breaks loose. As @Derf says “Enjoy the ride.” YOLO
WTF?. The Dow fell another 300 while I was writing. Will need to write faster! ;)
Pundits welcome!

By weekly or monthly peaks do you mean simply a rollup or summary of each week's values that shows the highest intraday (instantaneous) value achieved during that week? I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for since you add that intraday data is too noisy.
Perhaps you're looking for easy access to each week's closing value. Then one could calculate a monthly peak as the highest of the weekly closes, much as one might calculate a monthly peak as the highest daily close over the month. Either way, this is filtering out some noise. In the former, one is filtering out even daily fluctuations. In the latter, one is filtering out only intraday fluctuations.
Whatever. Here's Yahoo's weekly data for the S&P 500 (and its pre-1957 predecessor) going back to 1927. Since it gives both weekly instantaneous highs and weekly closes, it gives you whichever you're looking for. Digital, discrete. No analog charts, no mouseovers needed.
Yahoo weekly historical S&P 500 data (Yahoo can also return monthly data rather than weekly data.)
Unfortunately, not downloadable, likely due to licensing issues:

Please note: This [download] feature is not available for all instruments due to data licensing restrictions, in which case the "Download" option is not present.

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN2311.html

I don't look at intra day numbers to define off high/low because intra day is way too noisy. Even daily is noisy imo and I would prefer weekly or monthly but I need to find a tool that allows me easy access to weekly and monthly peaks without whipping out the calculator and reading charts.

SP500 is about 9% off its last peak so this isn't even technically a correction yet.

The S&P 500 ended with a 0.3 percent gain, but not before plunging to a point where it was more than 10 percent below its Jan. 3 record. That kind of drop, called a correction, doesn’t happen often, and is a marker of investors’ souring attitudes toward stocks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/business/economy/us-stock-market-correction-territory.html
That was as of Jan 24th. Today the S&P 500 again dipped below its Jan. 3 peak (hitting a low of 4287.11

per Yahoo). Does it really matter whether the index drop is "technically" a correction? What's the difference between dropping 9.99% and 10.01%?
As the NYTimes puts it, "The 10 percent trigger for a correction is an arbitrary, round-number threshold. But it serves as a signal that investors have turned pointedly more pessimistic about the market."

The actions on Mon, Tue & overnight Wed as captured in the futures markets at 30 min is simply impressive.
https://www.cmegroup.com/market-data/delayed-quotes/equities.html

Stock market corrections are often defined as 10% to <20% declines of market indexes from recent highs.
Using the same convention, bear markets occur when declines are 20% or greater.
These number thresholds were arbitrarily assigned (why not 15% and 30%?) and have little meaning.
Let's look at two prior "corrections" for the S&P 500.
Peak_________Trough_________Loss
9/20/2018_____12/24/2018_____‐19.8%
7/16/1990_____10/11/1990_____‐19.9%
Technically, both drawdowns are considered to be corrections.
However, they're within 0.2% of an "official" bear market.
Excluding statisticians, does it really matter if these drawdowns are classified as corrections or bear markets?

SP500 is about 9% off its last peak so this isn't even technically a correction yet.

The S&P 500 ended with a 0.3 percent gain, but not before plunging to a point where it was more than 10 percent below its Jan. 3 record. That kind of drop, called a correction, doesn’t happen often, and is a marker of investors’ souring attitudes toward stocks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/business/economy/us-stock-market-correction-territory.html
That was as of Jan 24th. Today the S&P 500 again dipped below its Jan. 3 peak (hitting a low of 4287.11 per Yahoo). Does it really matter whether the index drop is "technically" a correction? What's the difference between dropping 9.99% and 10.01%?
As the NYTimes puts it, "The 10 percent trigger for a correction is an arbitrary, round-number threshold. But it serves as a signal that investors have turned pointedly more pessimistic about the market."

Giroux favors the big ones. Probably out of necessity at this point. GE was his top pick in the recent Barron’s roundtable. Also Amazon and Kerug/Dr. Pepper. OAKBX also leads it by a few % points.
To be down that much in less than a month is concerning. Either the markets have it wrong (which I doubt) or he does.
In recent cnbc interview (late December) he mentioned waiting for more “blood” on the street before buying. So … chances are he’s nibbling. And, as I reported a week ago, he’s jacked up his leveraged loans. I think I’ve heard the lower rated paper isn’t doing so well presently. That’s one thing about OAKBX - they were mainly investment grade paper as I recall. D&C plays a bit in high yield, but not to the extent Giroux appears to be.

**********************
TRP Floating Rate PRFRX is now 8% of my stuff. The only holding that's above the zero-line so far in 2022. (Apart from a minuscule position in ENIC, the Chilean Electric utility, which pays a tiny supplemental "interim" dividend on Friday.) Yes, as of tonight, 25th Jan, PRWCX is down -6.2% YTD. I'd be adding, if it were strategically sound for me to do so.
TUHYX HY is down -1.44% YTD, too. Also 8% of my stuff. But these are long-hold positions for me.
***********************
PRWCX. Microsoft 7.5%
Amazon. 5.27%
GE. 4.4%
PNC. 3.8%
YUM 3.7%
Yes, "da BIG ones!" As @hank said.
PRWCX is still my biggest holding, at one-third of total assets, which includes a bit of stuff which is NOT with TRP. YTD, my stuff is down precisely -4.0%. It could be lots worse.

Giroux has a fantastic long term record. SP500 is about 9% off its last peak so this isn't even technically a correction yet. I track the rolling 36 month average of a fund to make hold/sell decisions, three weeks is wholly insufficient imo to make any kind of determination.

PRWCX/TRAIX has an excellent long-term record, so I’m planning to stick with it. It’s losing about 72% of the S&P 500 index YTD. This is about on par so far with what it dropped in 2008 relative to the S&P.

Tech and growth funds are down closer to 15%

Correction is 10% loss;20%loss is bear market;50% loss is a crash. 2020 qualified as a short-lived bear market-perhaps computerized trading will lessen the length of bear markets going forward.

It's a difficult question to answer, and the most honest one I could give is I don't know. But it's worth noting the goal of many alternative funds is not to beat a 50/50 SPY/Cash allocation. It's to deliver positive absolute performance beating 100% cash or T-bills while not being correlated with stocks or bonds. This fund seems to have done that at least with stocks so far. (I haven't seen its correlation with bonds, but given its different construction I would assume it isn't high.) But that doesn't mean it will do this in the future. I just find its lack of correlation, its actively managed style and the fact it delivered positive results during the first quarter of 2020 while also delivering in 2021 interesting. As for having multiple billions of assets under management, such defensive funds usually only get that kind of money when markets are poor and they, hopefully, hold up well. During a strong bull market, most investors won't even notice they exist.

One options indicator I follow is $SKEW (Stockcharts, etc) or ^SKEW (Yahoo, etc). When puts are more expensive than calls (due to high demand from the hedgers), then SKEW is high (140+); otherwise, SKEW is low/moderate (120s-130s). This is a refinement over the put-call ratio that simply uses put and call volumes. It doesn't work well by itself, but provides useful info with $VIX (^VIX). https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$VIX&amp;p=D&amp;yr=1&amp;mn=0&amp;dy=0&amp;id=p80512392701
When options volumes are high, they distort the market for the underlying stocks. For example, when the retail crowd piles into the calls of meme stocks, options dealers have to buy the underlying stock to maintain their hedges. Likewise, if there is huge amount of put buying, options dealers have to short the underlying stock to maintain their hedged positions.

Curious @LewisBraham....do you personally feel there is/can be a mostly succesful "all-weather" fund?
Marketing hyperbole? Can someone make it work in most market environments, can they beat a 50/50 SPY/Cash allocation to make the fee worth it? Wouldn't they have multiple billions in assets under mgmt?
Makes me think, question, if there deploy proprietary algorithm, models etc...most of them work until the don't as the saying goes about most quant funds.
Best,
Baseball Fan

For the 2nd day, someone is doing heavy duty selling (institutional rebalancing?) in the morning until about 11:00 AM Eastern, and then dippers come in around the lunchtime and onwards to reverse much of the morning action. VIX remains elevated at 30, meaning daily SP500 volatility of +/- 1.6%. VERY UNUSUAL.

Hoping most can read this (inflation, media coverage, reality ...)
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=116&amp;emc=edit_pk_20220125&amp;instance_id=51230&amp;nl=paul-krugman&amp;productCode=PK&amp;regi_id=22268089&amp;segment_id=80681&amp;te=1&amp;uri=nyt://newsletter/9bd96088-c8e7-5a15-8d66-b849d04a5f39&amp;user_id=83d45440ead1d14c2a89a1e7221337d1

Also fun fact.....YTD: SCHY -0.12% SCHD -3.53%

500 points here … and 500 points there … and pretty soon you’re talking about a real bear market..
- FOMC meetings usually cover 2 days. This month’s begins today, Tuesday. Tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday) they will issue their “statement” which will be followed by a press conference by Jerome Powell. Often, it’s the press conference that moves markets.
- Roughly quoting Randall Forsyth this week: “Watch what the Fed says, not what it does.” Meaning: They probably won’t raise rates at this meeting, but what they say about future QE or rate hikes will be the real news.
- Just browsing today’s WSJ, the economy has slowed significantly this year - largely attributed to covid.
- The wild market swings are not a positive sign. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 1,000 - 2,000 point one-day selloff in the Dow some day this week or next. ((I’m not psychic - just looking at patterns and, like everyone else, trying to draw some inferences.)