This is what we said this morning [9]:
For now equity futures have failed to be dragged along although with the S&P all time high just around the horizon, the psychological level of 1900 staring the rigged market in the face, and the weekend just around the corner, it is virtually assured that the S&P will close at an all time high today - after all the people need to be confident when they go shopping at malls with money they don't have (but delighted by paper profits they haven't booked) so they boost the US non-GAAP GDP (at least before like Italy, the BEA too changes the definition of GDP to include cocaine and hookers). Finally, assuring a (record?) low-volume levitation today is the early closure of the bond pit ahead of Memorial Day holiday which also means only a skeleton crew of algos will be frontrunning each other to push the S&P over 1,900.
Everything turned out precisely as predicted. Summing it all up perfectly - VIX closed at 15-month lows, Russell 2000 had its best week in 3 months, and Treasury yields are 13bps lower than when the S&P was last here... un-rigged.
The Russell 2000 rallied all the way back to unchanged for May - Mission Accomplished
[10]
Mission Accomplished 2.0 - S&P 1900 close
[11]
Mission Accomplished 3.0 - Dow and Nasdaq back to green for 2014
[12]
On the week...
[13]
And since the last time the S&P hit record intrday highs...
[14]
Who could have possibly know that stocks would wait for the bond police to close before they melted up in the last few minutes...
Looks like stocks are waiting for bonds to close at 2pm before ripping on no volume
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 23, 2014 [15]
VIX was in charge - but note just how noisy VIX has become - desk chatter is that "things feel fragile" in vol-markets...
[16]
And a glimpse at the intrday shows the moment the bond market closed.. the VIX-hammering began...
[17]
And USDJPY did its part bouncing off the 200DMA...
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But bonds closed 0-3bps lower in yield on the week...
[19]
And 13bps from the highs when the S&P was last trading here...
[20]
FX markets were dominated by JPY weakness from mid-week Boj jawboning and Aussie weakness after crappy data early in the week - leading the USD up 0.38% (for the 3rd week in a row)
[21]
Gold, silver, and copper all closed the week practically unchanged with WTI crude +1.7%
[22]
Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: Year to Date - Oil just became the best performing asset classover takinbg bonds and gold...
[23]
Bonus Bonus Chart: Growth has rallied back to unch relative to Value for the year...
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