US futures are set for a sharply lower open (at least in recent market terms) following a steep decline in European stocks and a selloff in Asian shares, following yesterday's sharp escalation in the war of words between the U.S. and North Korea. In a broad risk-off move U.S. Treasuries rose, the VIX surged above 12 overnight, while German bund futures climbed to the highest level in six weeks.
Following days of vocal and in some cases quite vivid warnings and predictions that the resent record ascent in the S&P is unsustainable and is set for a sharp correction from some of the most prominent names in finance including Howard Marks, Paul Singer and most recently Jeff Gundlach, here is Bloomberg's Mark Cudmore who has now also cast aside his recent bullishness, and in his overnight Macro View piece warns that we may have seen the highs of the S&P for the summer, if not the year.
S&P 500 May Have Just Topped Out for the Summer
A fascinating statistic about the current no-vol state of the market, courtesy of Deutsche's Jim Reid, who points out that the last time we had 13 consecutive days in which the S&P moved less than 0.3% in either direction was... never:
The 9th record close in a row for The Dow (and 10th straight day higher - longest streak since Feb).
As one veteran trader exclaimed "holy smokes... never saw volume this low" -
This is the lowest aggregate S&P 500 e-mini Futs volume for this day in history since 2001...
This is easy...
Even as the VIX has continued to plumb new all time lows, unable to rebound from the realm of single-digits where it has spent a record amount of time in 2017, warnings about a potential surge in the volatility index have been growing in recent weeks.