As one would expect with half the market away, US equity volumes were terrible (but fiunnily enough not much worse than yesterday) with most major indices trading in a very tight range around unchanged. Overnight strength in stocks on the back of USDJPY's momo ignition after Reuters headlines on Japan tax delays. Trannies, however, surged out of the gate, stalled into the European close, tumbled on oil weakness, then rallied back in the last hour - amid now news. Treasury futures were very quiet and went nowhere. The real story of the day was in the FX markets, which saw notable USD weakness led by EUR and AUD strength, and a late day rally in JPY (USDJPY tagged 116.00 stops then faded... that's 8 handles in 9 days). The USD weakness - which started around the European close - sparked a rally in copper, gold, and silver (and gold miners surged). Oil prices tested cycle lows before also bouncing back in a v-shaped recovery to close higher. Despite early intraday record highs in Dow and S&P futures, they ended practically unchanged as VIX was notably divergent. Late-day panic-buying lifted the Dow (+0.007%), S&P, and Russell 2000 green.
Spot the US "holiday" in trading volume.. (Spoiler Alert, you can't! Yesterday's volume was just as shitty as today's)
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Notable decoupling between stocks and VIX today...(that started late yesterday)
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Today's cash market trading was very narrow ranged - except for Trannies...
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Homebuilders were the big winners, because why not...
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But notice the price action since Payrolls... with the huge relative spike in NKY from the overnight Reuters headlines...
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Does the strength in financial stocks look sustainable? Because the credit market's opinion of US financials remains less than exuberant (of course, yet another round of fines for FX rigging this time are due tomorrow)
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The USD weakened notably, giving up all of yesterday's gains back to unch on the week...
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USDJPY tagged 116.00 stops then faded... (that's 8 handles in 9 days) and NKY is still decoupled though beta was high today
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The USD weakness today prompted commodity buying pressure (but we note oil prices initially dropped on the move before catching up)... this is commodity performance post-Payrolls...
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Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: BABA had its worst day since IPO...
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