Stocks are rallying into the open. However, the technical damage of the last week has been severe.
The S&P 500 crashed through its trendline (blue line). It also crashed through critical support established by the bounces in September and October (green line).
We might get a bounce here to retest that green line, but unless a major Central Bank launches a new monetary program stocks are heading DOWN.
As we noted in the jobs preview, only a super strong number had any chance of prompting a market reaction, and sure enough, the just announced December print of +292,000 smashed expectations of +200K, surging from last month's upward revised 252K, while October was revised to a massive 307,000, a net addition of 50K over the last two months.
So time for another rate hike, right?
This week is simply the worst we had in recent history for markets, RBS exclaims, the worst ever start to the year for The Dow, the worst since 1999 for S&P and the second-worst for credit since 2008. Worst still is, they think there’s more weakness ahead and that many fundamental risks will continue to haunt markets. Why? Simple! Investors drank too much policy kool-aid last year.
Worst ever start to a year...
And worst week for equity and credit markets in recent history...
Now that the Fed has commenced its rate hike cycle, the jobs report suddenly takes on far less significance because only a massively "outlier" print will have an impact on Fed thinking, thinking which so far appears undented despite a raging manufacturing recession across the US. This means that the December jobs could be the "most important ever" only in retrospect, with either a huge miss (think < 100,000) or huge beat (> 275,000) having a material impact at a time when algos are much more focused on China scrambling to prevent its economy - and market - crashing, hard.