What does history say about the week following options expirations?

What evil omen has the market noticed?  What devil-on-the-loose does it fear?

The incoming Obama Administration is beginning to grease the wheels and the market is liking it.

The US dollar and Japanese yen – the biggest beneficiaries of flight-to-quality and deleveraging – both tumbled on news that the Treasury, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. pledged up to $306 billion to shield Citigroup from losses related to toxic assets, though the firm must absorb the first $37 billion to $40 billion in losses, while also agreeing to inject an additional $20 billion in capital.

Futures are telling us there will be more gains when the stock market opens Monday morning. This upside bias comes from the weekend’s government rescue plan of Citibank (C), which injected $20 billion in cash and guaranteed billions in assets.

Leverage is an eight-letter word, which the markets now regard as twice as bad as the two four-letter words debt and pain.

Professional system trader Art Collins shares his daily biases in the index, bonds and currency futures markets for November 24.

Boris Schlossberg summarizes winning trading in three rules.

With a concentrated shot of event risk, growing threats to the credit and financial markets, and the unusual trading conditions expected to come along with the holiday, the chances for a breakout are intensified.

The British pound spent much of last week consolidating above the November 13 lows of 1.4557, but left little indication of whether the next move would be a correction higher or a break down towards the next.