NASDAQ

UPDATE: AA earnings beat, missed, won, lost, with forecasts up and down... facts below!

From the close after the Fed's QEternity announcement, it may surprise some that the Russell 2000, Nasdaq, and Dow Transports are all down 4%. S&P futures have retraced all of last week's gains, dropping the most in over week amid significant volume. AAPL dumped to its 100DMA, bounced, failed to break yesterday's VWAP close, then tumbled back to today's VWAP for another down day. VIX popped the most in 2 weeks (up over 1.2 vols) to end at 16.2%. From the 9/14 peak in stocks, only Healthcare is in the green, with Energy/Tech/Materials down around 5%. Oil jumped higher (up 3% on the week) in the face of USD strength that weighed a little on the rest of the commodity sector.

With bond-traders amiss - no doubt all celebrating the indigenous people of our great nation - volumes were dismal and so was any evidence of a BTFD mentality in risk. AAPL, amid the biggest three-day slide in almost six-months, saw pullbacks to VWAP sold immediately (signaling more institutional biased selling) ending very close to a 10% correction from its highs. This weighed on Tech (obviously) which was the worst performing sector and dragged Nasdaq (and the S&P) lower. In general equities stayed in sync with risk-assets on the day (we note that TLT's move implies around a 4-5bps compression in yields at the long-end of the Treasury curve) though the lack of liquidity made the relationships noisy. Low volumes, low range, a premature ramp in the last hour that gathered no momentum left S&P futures having retraced 50% of their low-to-high swing of last week. Gold and Oil decoupled early then recoupled late, ending the day down but outperforming the implied weakness from USD strength (EUR weakness balanced JPY and AUD strength on the day). Copper and Silver ended the day down 1.4%. VIX 'outperformed' equity weakness and pushed a notable 0.8 vols higher back over 15%.

Some correction of Friday’s Bull trap: European Risk Off, EGB credit torsion and weaker equities.

Doubtful whether any fireworks will come out of the ECOFIN meeting.

Seems to be more about maintaining the relative market quietness and status-quo.

It will come as no surprise to any ZeroHedge readers but High Frequency Trading (HFT) deeply concerns Erik Hunsader, founder of Nanex. He worries that today's investors, our regulators, -- heck, even the HFT algorithms themselves -- don't fully understand the risks market prices face in the brave new era of bot-dominated trading. For instance, Hunsader estimates that HFT algorithms are responsible for 70%(!) of all completed transactions on our exchanges, and for 99.9%(!!!) of all exchange quotes. The pictures of trading floors you see on TV, where the people in bright jackets appear frantically busy in making their trades, have no bearing -- claims Hunsader -- on the actual trading action. The real action happens across fiber-optic cables, on racks of servers in cooled rooms; where an arms race defined by cable length and switching speeds is being waged. The reality is that the machines have taken over.

While Europe was ripping higher this morning, commodity prices were slipping quietly lower and Treasury prices higher as the USD was very modestly higher and US equity futures were treading water. The payroll print provided the fuel to pump us up to within a tick of the year's highs in the S&P, smashed the USD weaker, twanged Treasury yields higher and sent Financials and Materials zooming higher. Unable to break those record highs, stocks reversed as Energy (Oil was sliding once again) and Tech (AAPL) led them lower. Within a few hours we had retraced the entire NFP spike in FX and equity markets but Treasury yields kept pushing higher (30Y +14bps on the week). Gold closes green on the week while Oil/Silver/Copper were red as the AUD lost almost 2% against the USD and EUR gained 1%. AAPL tumbled 2%, closing below its 50DMA for its biggest 2-week slide in six months. VIX was jabbed under 14% briefly but ended fractionally lower on the day at 14.4% (-0.2vols). Equities and risk-assets disengaged today and equity's inability to manage a late-day ramp (and AAPL closing at lows) must be a little concerning for the cheerleaders.

Threaky Thursday. Oil perfectly round-tripped its plunge from yesterday (ending back above $91.50) as Treasury yields caught 'up' to equity strength on the week. USD weakness was a one-way street of straight-line trend from 0500ET in EUR today - until the Fed minutes broke something. Gold and stocks continue their synchronized lift - though gold is still the clear winner post QEternity. Trannies outperformed again but the day-session in the Dow and the S&P were largely treading water - after the factory-order-driven stop run surge this morning. Meanwhile, all those front-running winners in MBS land have seemingly started to unwind - as mortgage spreads have retraced post-QEternity gains quite significantly (which is likely what helped Treasury yields higher today - though the convergence to risk also helped). The ubiquitous 3ET AAPL ramp was modestly front-run and epically failed as the stock-that-shall-not-be-named closed red with a $666 handle once again with some major volume at the close. VIX was solidly banged lower right at the close (coinciding with AAPL's high volume action) to end at 14.55 (down 0.88vols) in line with the S&P.

• Romney dominates presidential debate (FT)
• What Romney’s Debate Victory Means (Bloomberg)
• Obama Lead Shrinks in Two Battlegrounds (WSJ)
• "Everything will fall apart unless the Spanish conditions are extremely tough" German policy-maker (Telegraph)
• Draghi Stares at Spain as Brinkmanship Keeps ECB Waiting (Bloomberg)
• RBS facing loss after Spanish property firm collapse (Telegraph)
• Burdened by Old Mortgages, Banks Are Slow to Lend Now (WSJ)
• The Woman Who Took the Fall for JPMorgan Chase (NYT)
• European Banks Told to Hold On to $258 Billion of Fresh Capital (Bloomberg)
• Europe Weighs More Sanctions as Iran’s Currency Plummets (Bloomberg)

So the Fed is pinning its hopes on stimulating the economy via the wealth effect again, as it did when it revived the post-tech-wreck asset bubble in housing and credit in that now infamous 2003-07 period of radical excess. But here's the rub. While there is a wealth effect on spending, the correlation going back to 1952 is only 57%. But the correlation between spending and after-tax personal incomes is more like 75%. The impact is leagues apart. And that is the problem here, as we saw real disposable personal income decline 0.3% in August for the largest setback of the year. The QE2 trend of 1.7% is about half the 3.2% trend that was in place at the time of 0E2. Not only that, but the personal savings rate is too low to kick-start spending, even if the Fed is successful in generating significant asset price inflation. The savings rate now is at a mere 3.7%, whereas it was 6% at the time of QE1 back in 2009 and over 5% at the time of QE2 2010 — in other words, there is less pent-up demand right now and a much greater need to rebuild rather than draw down the personal savings rate. This is a key obstacle even in the face of higher net worth.

In April of 2009 we warned very explicitly that reliance on the fake "liquidity" (which was never liquidity per se but merely volume and churn) by the HFT algos that stuff quotes, frontrun each other, spoof, layer, and generally make a mockery out of the thing fomerly known as the market (which is now more than anything a policy vehicle for central planners but that's a different story) would result in tears. A year later the first flash crash happened, and ever since then more and more people have finally realized how our 3+ year long crusade against HFT (which sadly is now a minor distraction against the far greater evil which is central bank dominance of capital markets) was spot on, confirmed by the recent segments (here, here and here) on CNBC which effectively confirmed the markets are not only a joke, but without any real depth, i.e. fake. What is amusing is that people still don't understand why the exchanges, and the regulators (coopted by the exchanges) allow HFT to continue. Here is the answer: in 2011 the CME made 31.5% of all its revenues from HFT, the ICE: 25.1%, the NYSE: 21.4%, the Nasdaq: 17.1%, the CBOE: 22.4%, and so on.

Wow! Good equity swings in Europe: Down about 1% to the morning lows, up nearly 2% to noon highs and tanking back over 1.25% into the close.

 Core & Soft EGBs rather muted in volatility, closing by and large unchanged, with Periphery bonds running a separate path.

Again that decorrelation.

Jump, Jive & Wail…

Market indexes and recessions are two very different data series...

~ Doug Short

Ending the day at the lows, AAPL's stock price traded with a truly demonic $666.66  after-hours. The reason for the last few days' weakness? Who knows when a bubble bursts but between its analog to MSFT's meteoric rise, the stocks' weight in the NASDAQ, 'disappointing' first-week sales, Cook's Maps FUBAR, supply-chain disruptions, or the market having to suddenly price in the arrival of the new Obama-phone, volumes have been picking up.

Back in 2009 Zero Hedge was first the only, and shortly thereafter, one of very few non-conformist voices objecting to pervasive high frequency trading and other type of quantitative market manipulation in the form of Flash Trading (which has recently reemerged in yet another form of frontrunning known as "Hide not Slide" practices) quote stuffing, and naturally latency arbitrage: one of the most subversive means to rob the less than sophisticated investor blind, due to an illegal coordination between market markers, exchanges and regulators, which effectively encouraged a two-tier market (one for the ultra fast frontrunning professionals, and one for everyone else). A week ago we were amused to see that the SEC charged the NYSE with a wristslap, one for $5 million dollars and where the NYSE naturally neither admitted nor denied guilt, accusing it of doing precisely what we said it, and all others, had been doing for years: namely getting paid by wealthy traders, those using the prop data feed OpenBook Ultra and other paid systems, to create and perpetuate a two-tiered market, all the while the regulator, i.e., the SEC was paid to look the other way. This action was nothing but a desperate, and futile, attempt to regain some investor confidence in the market. It has failed, and since said "enforcement" action has done nothing to restore confidence, expect to see more exchanges slapped with fines for actively perpetuating latency arbitrage opportunities for "some" clients. Well, since the SEC will be desperate to come up with more means of "restoring credibility" of both the market and its regulator, another exchange it may want to look at is the NASDAQ, which as Nanex demonstrates, may well have been engaging in comparable (most likely not pro-bono) latency arbitrage benefiting some: those paying for its direct feed aka TotalView, and thus not harming others, or those relying on the Consolidated Feed (UQDF) for data dissemination.

So after 2 hell of positive weeks with fairy dust sprinkled by the CBU (Central Banks United), things seem a little out of breath here.

Post-Central Bank intervention depression, so to speak, as the question on everyone’s mind is “What’s next?

Add to that soured geopolitics that stirred spirits in Asia, MENA and to some extend in regional Spain.

It doesn't get much more obvious than this. The S&P at multi year highs, and what does the CME do? Why it lowers initial (as in please come in and open new positions) spec margin for not only the E-Mini, but virtually every other major market "reflexive" product in existence including S&P, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and subsector futures currently traded, by 12%. As a reminder, the last time that "other" asset class rose to multi-year highs, that would be gold, it hiked margin nearly every single day, with a culmination of two margins hikes in one day on May 4. Naturally, the margin hiker-in-chief is not as worried about stocks attaining the same bubble status since if anything it will merely cement reelection chances. That said, should WTI ever dare to go up above $100 watch as the CME proceeds to decimate anyone who dares to be long WTI futures on margin.