S&P 500

Two days after stocks slid in a coordinated risk-off session, and one day after a DOE estimate of US oil inventories sent US stocks surging while the failed Allergan-Pfizer deal unleashed torrential hopes of a biotech M&A spree leading to the single best day for the sector in 5 years, sentiment has again shifted, this time due to a violent surge in the Yen as the market keeps testing the resolve of the Japanese central bank to keep its currency weak, and so far finding it to be nonexistent.

Yesterday we first reported something unexpected: when looking at the constituents of the record short squeeze that started two months ago, and still continues, traders had largely maintained kept single-name shorts, and instead covered short ETF exposure.

This followed a previous observation showing that when it comes to NYSE short interest, it is near the record highs (in absolute terms, if not as a % of market cap) reached during the financial crisis.

By Ben Hunt of Salient Partners

"My Passion Is Puppetry"

Having pounded the table on buybacks as the only marginal source of stock purchasing since some time in 2013, we were delighted one month ago when Bloomberg finally got it, writing an article titled "There's Only One Buyer Keeping S&P 500's Bull Market Alive." The answer: corporate stock repurchases of course.

This is what it found:

Almost exactly one month ago, on March 10,Mario Draghi unveiled his quadruple bazooka, which among other features, included the first ever monetization of corporate bonds (this has unleashed such an unprecedented scramble for European bonds that there are virtually none left in the open market leading to massive illiquidity and forcing yield chasers to sell CDS instead of buying bonds, thus laying the ground work for the next AIG debacle).