Headlines will suggest that today's rally was due to the beat in US PMI (a data item that doesn't even rank on Bloomberg's scale of economic importance) and chose to ignore the misses (macro and micro) in everything else (which must be weather-related), the facts are different - it was simply an AUDJPY-inspired almost perfect correlation levitation from the post-China-PMI miss lows - more China QE to come. Having decoupled from USDJPY overnight, today's melt-up in stocks recoupled the all-important fun-durr-mental pair and lifted the Russell 2000 back to unchanged for 2014. With OPEX tomorrow, VIX was noisy and remains bearishly divergent from stocks (though was offered today). Credit markets lifted with stocks. Treasury yields rose back to modestly higher on the week. Gold and silver rose on the day starting from the China PMI miss (as did the USD with most of the majors losing ground against it). US Macro hits fresh 6-month lows.
AUDJPY ruled the day...Spot the Difference (what's the forward P/E of AUDJPY?)
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And USDJPY and S&P 500 recoupled...
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As The Russell 2000 reached all the way back up to unchanged for 2014
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Russell and Nasdaq cash are up 7.3% off the early Feb lows...
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US Treasuries sold off today - back to modestly higher in yield on the week...though the afterenoon saw buying come back in even as stocks rose...
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Gold and silver rose non-stop following the China PMI miss...
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Today was all about hope of more liquidity from the China PMI miss...
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Of course, Goldman proclaiming last night That the FOMC minutes were not hawkish probably helped to pump this idiocy.
What everyone was talking about though was FB buying WhatsApp - not every day you blow $16bn and add a few bn market cap... notice that today's VWAP close was almost exactly yeaterday's close - makes u wonder if the machines were running the show higher for the big boys to get out?
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Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: US Macro is a mess...
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Bonus Bonus Chart: NKY and USDJPY not playing well with each other again...
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