by Craig Hemke, Sprott Money:

We have officially entered the period known as “the dog days of summer”. For the markets, this means light volume and low interest as carbon-based traders look for one more holiday before autumn and the drive toward year end.

At TFMR, we’ve always defined the “Dog Days” as the period between the first Friday of August and the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole meeting three weeks later. This is the primary period when European traders take their annual holiday and U.S. traders try to squeeze in one more vacation before summer ends and school starts.