NASDAQ

Strong start in Risk to take out new 2012 highs in Equities and trying to retrace near 2012 Credit lows, too. Core EGBs cool. Bunga Square’s rug pulling scuttled all that easy living by noon, weighting on the Periphery and boosting Core EGBs. ECB gloomy. Equity – bond divergence not a flyer yet, though… US sideways and Risk Watchers back to scanning European politics. EUR falling of the carpet.

• MSM discovers window dressing: Fund Managers Lift Results With Timely Trading Sprees (WSJ)
• White House Unyielding on Debt Limit (WSJ)
• Obama, Boehner talk; Geithner prepared to go off "cliff" (Reuters)
• Republicans urged to resist tax rises (FT)
• China looms large over Japanese poll (FT)
• As predicted here two months ago, Greek Bond Buyback Leads S&P to Cut to Selective Default (BBG)
• Japan opposition LDP set to win solid election majority – polls (BBG), but...
• Japan Opposition LDP’s Main Ally Cautions Abe on BOJ Pressure (BBG)
• U.S. and Europe Tackle Russia Trade (WSJ)
• King Seen Maintaining QE as Osborne Extends Fiscal Squeeze (BBG)
• Syria pound fall suggests currency crisis (FT)
• Irish budget seeks extra €3.5bn (FT)
• U.K. Extends Cuts Due to Poor Outlook (WSJ)
• ECB Seen Refraining From Rate Cuts as Yields Sink on Bond Plan (BBG)

What a ridonculous day. We nearly dragged the deer out - or even Donkey Kong - but the epic awesomeness of the swings in stocks today (most notably the S&P 500 - since AAPL/NASDAQ tracked lower and more consistently all day) was simply remarkable. AAPL broke all kinds of records today (losing more market cap today than 80% of the S&P 500 companies in total h/t Peter Tchir). Despite the rapid collapse on the S&P 500 into the close (as HYG pulled off its lows in a failed convergence trade) amid heavy volume, saw the S&P manage a gain on the day but down on the month (while the Dow Industrials and Transports are basically unchanged since 11/30). Rates fell and stayed near their lows for the day; commodities chopped around (as usual) but ended marginally lower from yesterday's day-session close; financials were the winners on the day but led by just great companies as BofA and Citi which staged a tick-for-tick algo liftathon odyssey of idiocy (now up around 6% on the month!!). All-in-all, the S&P remains rich to risk assets but the overflow from AAPL's collapse has likely not played out yet as taps-on-the-shoulder will be everywhere tonight.

Last night, the NASDAQ announced that Facebook (FB) will replace Infosys (INFY) in the NASDAQ-100 index. This change will become effective next Tuesday, December 11, after market close. This is merely the first swap in what is an annual Index reconstitution tradition for the tech-heavy, IPO-error prone index: next Friday, December 14, the NASDAQ will announce the official full list of new entrants and exit-ants from the index, which will take place on December 21, which usually serves as a technical buying boost for the new members, while those companies kicked out see substantial selling pressure as index funds no longer have to own the names. Below we present an analysis by Deutsche Bank's Bo Huang who lists, in order of conviction the names most likely to benefit (additions), and be punished (removals), from the reconstitution.  The names likely most likely to benefit: Kraft Foods, Regeneron, Libery Media, Analog Devices, Catamaran and Equinix. On the other hand, those holding Netflix, Apollo Group, Warner Chilcott, Green Mountain Coffee, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, or the recent Lazarus, until a month ago left for dead, Research in Motion, may want to quietly sell their holdings. They will likely have a better re-entry point after next Friday's announcement and prompt reallocation.

US equities tried to escape the draw of a strong Treasury market and weak gold market all day but kept being dragged back to reality (with a late-day dive on decent volume making the most interesting moment of the day). The day-session range was relatively low but volumes were ok as we leaked lower on the day. NASDAQ was the weakest (thanks to AAPL's push back towards it 'generational low') and TRANS outperformed - but the latter was playing catch up to the rest from yesterday's weakness (still lagging on the week). S&P futures clung to VWAP most of the afternoon in a rather uneventful day even as VIX pushed 0.5 vols higher to close above 17% for the first time in three weeks - notably divergent from stocks. EUR strength (+0.8% this week!), while modestly supportive, has largely decoupled from equity movements this week as correlations across risk assets have dropped notably.

Moments ago the SEC, with about a two year delay, decided to finally act tought, and in a parting present to the most ineffective and clueless chairman of the coopted and corrupt organization ever seen, that would be Mary Schapiro of course, lashed out at Chinese affiliates of Big Four accounting firms as well as BMO, for refusing to produce audit work papers and other documents related to China-based companies under investigation by the SEC for potential accounting fraud against U.S. investors. Of course, readers of Zero Hedge will recall what we dubbed the formation of a cottage industry exposing Chinese fraudcaps back in November of 2010 when we warned that virtually every reverse merger out of China will soon prove to be a fraud, but because of the listing fees that US exchanges would get as a result of local listing, nobody cared, and only that now extinct class of gullible and naive investors would lose their entire investments. It is now two years and one month later, and the SEC has finally acted on it.

Anyone watching the close of the market last night will likely still be shaking off the hangover as we noted 'the most ridiculous' market movements occurred in the space of a few milliseconds. As ever, trusty investigator of all things ridiculous in equity markets, Nanex highlights a rather disturbing trend, now completed its third year, where volume compression simply breaks the market. On 11/30/11, quotes from Nasdaq suddenly stopped for about 20 seconds after another explosive close where multiple seconds worth of trading were jammed into the last second. However, trading at Nasdaq wasn't affected. This is yet another example of where direct feeds illegally give data to one group of subscribers ahead of the consolidated feed. Clearly, the NBBO was ignored. For the last 3 years (2009, 2010, and 2011), there has been unusually high trading activity in the final minutes of trading activity on the last trading day in November. We show one example stock in detail below (SPY). Human discounting of a known rebalancing event? No. Completely 'broken markets' that are driven by self-reinforcing and chaos-reverting algos? Yes.

With a late-day surge into the green for the S&P 500 futures on (as usual) absolutely no news at all (attributed to MSCI rebalancing) - that crossed the entire day's range in the space of 40 minutes, the Dow managed to just hold 13,000 and close green for the week. There was very significant volume and block size into the ramp as it pulled away from risk-assets as only a month-end move can magically achieve. In the same way as last Friday's close was just remarkably silly, today followed the same path - though we note that rates and credit were outperforming stocks most of the day and provided the target for the late-day surge. Once that target was closed, S&P 500 futures then melted-down around the close and after-hours. Utilities were the big winners on the week (+3.5%) as Financials and Energy lost around 0.7%. Silver crumbled to recouple with Gold (down around 2% on the week) while Copper gained 3%. Treasury yields steepened into the close with the 30Y pushing higher but ending -2bps (while the 10Y was -7bps). What a crazy stop-hunting, algo-driven, VWAP-reverting end to a week of political volatility.

Generally bullish, sitting back and enjoying the show while it lasts.

We noted the debacle that occurred at midnight Eastern last night but the impact of this sudden and completely unfounded voluminous surge in buying activity (on no news or rumors) was much more widespread than just e-mini S&P 500 futures. The other equity indices also tagged along and we saw volumes and quote-rates jump in EURUSD futures, but more so in Crude futures and AUD futures. Thanks to NANEX, the charts below show the millisecond-by-millisecond reality of a broad and deep-pocketed algo liftathon as most of the East coast was tucked up in bed and Europe had still to wake. PPT - who knows? But it seems unusual at best or someone somewhere getting a rather large tap on the shoulder to shut their entire futures book?