Business

As the battle between Brits' fiercely historic "independence" and the establishment's Project Fear, anxiety is building over the looming Brexit decision. Despite rallies in most markets over the past few weeks, UK-related risk premia remain extremely-elevates with British corporate bond risk notably decopled from EU's credity risk but it is the FX markets where the biggest dislocations are with Cable volatility at its most elevated ever relative to EUR.

GBPUSD (Cable) volatility curve is completely perturbed...

Seemingly echoing Fed's Williams earlier hawkish comments, Atlanta Fed's Lockhart notes that full employment is "getting closert and closer," and warns that "rate hikes are justified in 2016, possibly soon,"

• *LOCKHART SAYS RATE HIKE JUSTIFIED AS EARLY AS APRIL FOMC

It is clear the messagge that is being sent - don't keep buying stocks in anticipation of our 'put' (but don't sell 'em below 2000 either).

Or is it a desperate attempt to reclaim some lost credibility?

"First quarter earnings will be difficult," warns JPMorgan's global head of equity strategy, suggesting investors consider reducing market exposure and/or "consider buying protection." While Rees is not quite as directly 'sell-it-all ' - adding that he hopes H2 earnings will pick up - his overall message, beneath the JPM vineer, is not bullishly biased.

Last week, when looking at the latest fund flow data, we noted an unexpected finding: as BofA itself said, "clients don’t believe the rally, continue to sell US stocks" and added that the "smart money" has now sold stocks in the face of this bear market rally for a near record seven consecutive weeks."

In September/October 2015, the S&P 500 miraculously rallied just over 13% in 25 days amid falling earnings expectations, before collapsing back to fresh cycle lows. It has now been 25 days (and just over 13%) since the Mid-Feb lows (and earnings expectations are plumbing new lows)...

The same but different?

h/t @ErikFridman

Nope - the same!?

Trade accordingly.