Today Janet Yellen and the FOMC will go back to square one and try to reset global expectations unleashed by the ill-fated December rate "policy mistake" hike, when at 2pm the Fed will announce assessment of the economy (even if not rate hike is expected today) followed by Yellen press conference half an hour later.
Just when traders thought that the biggest and most violent 3-day short squeeze in 7 years was about to end...
... a squeeze that has resulted in 3 consecutive 1%+ sessions for the S&P for the first time since October 2011, overnight we got one of the Fed's biggest faux-hakws, St. Louis Fed's Jim Bullard, who said that it would be "unwise" to continue hiking rates at this moment, and hinted that "if needed", the most natural option for the Fed going forward would be to do further Q.E.
Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,
An indicator based on the first hour versus last hour of stock trading has undergone a shift similar to those seen at the prior 2 cyclical tops.
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...