Business

It appears The ADP Employment report was not good enough to support fed rate-hikes as across the majors, traders are selling USDs... Gold is also surging. It appears someone is betting large that this week's payroll data will be weak...

Dollar is being dumped against the majors...

And gold is bid...

As Bloomberg reports, ICE's U.S. Dollar Index has tumbled from an almost two-month high set on Jan. 29, when the Bank of Japan’s decision to implement negative interest rates drove investors into the greenback.

Yesterday we reported that following a spike in calls by the sellside to "sell the rally", hedge funds did just that and according to BofA client data, hedge funds dumped the most shares in the past week in two years.  Today, JPM's Adam Crisafulli repeats the firm's now default call for 2016, noting that "the bigger picture backdrop for the market remains the same."

Here are the three key backdrops:

It was just two days ago that Bloomberg implored officials to “bring on a cashless future” in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins “dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive.”

You probably never thought of your cash that way, but increasingly, authorities and the powers that be seem determined to lay the groundwork for the abolition of what Bloomberg calls “antiquated” physical money.

• Oil lifts stocks off lows, yen and low-risk debt in favor (Reuters)
• Yes, this agaim: Oil gains after Russia says open to talking with OPEC (Reuters)
• More forecasts: Oil Prices Could Jump 50% by the End of 2016 (BBG)
• New Risks for Trump After Iowa Loss (WSJ)
• Yuan Gap Widens Again as Depreciation Bets Swamp PBOC Fightback (BBG)
• Germany Struggles to Assess Security Threats Ahead of Carnival Season (WSJ)
• Marco Rubio becomes early hope for mainstream U.S. Republicans (Reuters)

While the biggest news of the night had nothing to do with either oil or China, all that mattered to US equity futures trading also was oil and China, and since WTI managed to rebound modestly from their biggest 2-day drop in years, continuing the trend of unprecedented, HFT-driven volatility which has far surpassed that of equities and is shown in the chart below...