Equities At Lowest Close Of Week As Reversion To Reality Reappears

S&P 500 e-mini futures closed at 415ET today at 1314.75 which is the lowest close of the week, with Monday's surge providing all the juice for what seemed a hope-driven rumor-ridden few days.Tough day today for recent darlings of the dumpfests FB and JPM - as the former tested back towards 31 the figure and the latter retraced all its post-Wednesday-ECB-rumor-ramp gains - before a late pop helped it out (-1.5% today). Volume was expectedly low and average trade size equally dimsally low as yesterday. Stocks repeated the same pattern today, retracing all of their late-day-ramp gains and reverting back to credit's reality but we note that HYG was a significant underperformer today - as credit markets went dead into the last hour. For the week, commodities have seemingly regrouped from mid-week dispersion but are generally lower (despite a positive last couple days for Gold and Silver) but are outperforming the implied weakness from a 1.6% gain in the USD on the week as EURUSD went out at its lows around 1.25. Slow day with only Utilities managing gains in stocks today but Gold and Silver appeared to be the beat-adjusted winners as them and the USD gain from Europe's fears. Interestingly Gold and Stocks recoupled by the close - beta-adjusted - from Wednesday's divergence, with USD and Treasuries pointing to lower risk asset prices.

Notice stocks (blue) and gold (gold) recoupled at today's close (orange oval) from Wednesday's beta. Treasury yields (red) and USD (green - inverted) strength appear to indicate lower risk asset prices as the divergences spread...

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Stocks did recover to credit's reality - for the 3rd time this week - but HYG's weakness today is likely hurting a few (even if we did see YTD record outflows)...

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