The weakness in stocks accelerated after Europe's close, was briefly stalled by algo wildness and VWAP buys on Bernanke's completely non-news speech this afternoon, then dropped into the close, but was far outweighed by the moves in commodities. WTI Crude has dropped over 6% in the last 4 days - its biggest such drop in almost 8 months. The last 2 days have seen gold rise at its fastest pace in almost 3 months. Treasuries ended the week practically unchanged with a modest selloff on Bernanke leading to a 2-3bps drop in yield sin 2014 so far. The USD kept soaring on the back of EUR weakness (as the liquidity flows came back out) but JPY was in charge of ferrying stocks once again (until the last few minutes). The Bernanke VIX slam failed to ignite any real momentum and stocks slipped into the close - with the NASDAQ ands SPX red (but Dow green). Of course, POMO restarts next week so shorting will be banned...
AAPL dropped to its 50DMA and pretty much close there today - first time in 2 months...
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Stocks dropped again in the early Asian session, recovered in Europe, tumbled on Europe's close, rallied on Bernanke's speech, then tumbled into the close...
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And sector performance from the Taper...
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VIX remains weak...
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Commodities on the week...
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With oil's worst few days in almost 8 months...
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And the new year in gold...
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USD strength from the start of the new year after EUR and US lqiuidty needs settled out...
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Notably JPY was the driver post EU Close but AUDJPY ran the show into the close...
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With POMO starting agaon next week, we suspect correlations will rise once again - or equity markets have a problem...
Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: The Dow-Nikkei channel remains...
