Nomura's McElligott Spots A $300 Billion "Coiled Spring" Of "Exotic" Market Chaos

While the financial press spent the past week congratulating itself on a 4-peat of dovish prints - a soft NFP, a benign CPI, a PPI that refused to bite, and today's dismal retail sales - which pushed stocks to fresh all time high on vapor volumes, Nomura's Charlie McElligott was, as usual, watching the plumbing. And the plumbing, to borrow his own word, has gone wonky.

Because here's the setup that pundits would rather avoid (if they could even explain it in the first place): dovish data everywhere, oil strangely comatose despite what McElligott calls "the insane quagmire of nothingness in Iran / Strait"... and yet bonds still can't find a single friend. Duration remains friendless, the curve keeps bear-steepening, and rate vol just shrugs "low cares," with the data calendar gone quiet and Warsh keeping his mouth shut. In other words, the market is doing what it always does when nobody's steering: drifting down the path of least resistance. Or in this case up. 

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