Today was simply dreadful. S&P 500 futures saw their narrowest day-session range in six months and lowest day-session volume of the year. No matter what was tried today - vol compression, EURJPY (carry) ramps, Oil stop-run - equities did not respond with any algo-driven exuberance. Stocks ended the day practically unchanged even as AAPL did its best to hold them up - filling its post-earnings gap and fading. Five things dominated the day: Gold and Silver were slammed lower early on; ECB's Weidmann slammed EUR higher early on; Oil prices surged above $97 (WTI); and then France's Moscivici spoke and retraced all the EUR's gains; and then a 3pmET rampathon in JPY. For the bulls, this is healthy stabilization; For the bears, this is a day where normal risk drivers had no impact and stocks never followed through on new highs. Credit remains pensive as renewed rises in oil prices will crimp margins (and the consumer's pocket) but none of that matters as JPY crosses remain in play.
Today's day-session range (middle pane) was the lowest in six months... Today's day-session volume (lower pane) was the lowest of the year...
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But what was different today - aside from the total lack of participation - was the fact that risk-assets (as proxied by Capital Context's CONTEXT model [7]) were not tracked higher by stocks... this is something we have not seen for weeks. Typically since this rally began, we have seen any risk-asset fade bought up to equities; today something shifted...
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It appears the final result today is Germany 1 : 1 France as Weidmann's impact was negated by Moscovicis's response... but what is very evident is the 3pmET inverse rampathon on JPY as it dumped...(and no response from stocks)...
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It remains unclear what the catalyst for precious metals to plunge about 830ET - though Gold clung to $1650 by the close. WTI surged over $97 by the close - but stocks did not ghet excited as they normally do...
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And all of this happens to have started on November 14th - when Noda dissolved Japan's parliament...
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Lots of noise today - but stocks and bonds tended to stay close together (in a narrow range) with Oil surging and Gold down and the USD unamused...
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Very odd day - stocks (for once) really not playing along... even as VIX closed below 13%.
Today had the sense of some epic towels being thrown in - between the precious metals dump pre-market, Oil surge, and then late-day JPY implosion - these are not natural moves!!
Charts: Bloomberg and Capital Context
Bonus Chart: AAPL filled its gap from earnings but saw a very large average trade size (and low volume) - this suggest strongly to us that this was bigger blocks exiting as opposed to reloading longs...
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