S&P

With nearly a record 40 days of the S&P not having an intraday swing of 1% or more, traders - desperate for volatility - are fuming at a market that has apparently flatlined. They are not alone: as JPM's Adam Crisafulli writes in his overnight piece, "it was once again a night of nothing", and no matter what happens, "nothing is changing the equity narrative", which for now is to barely budy on any given day.

Here is the key excerpt from JPM's (appropriately boring) overnight note:

This is what you call living in a vacuum.
 
Herald van der Linde from HSBC believes the market's hesitance to go up, uninterrupted of any pullbacks, is due to Donald Trump's twitter account's revelations. For the life of me, I cannot grasp how this high level retard deduced that annualized returns of 25-30% on the $SPY equates to a market struggling to find its footing. More to that point, the market is higher by more than 10% since election night -- with numerous sectors (financials, commodities) higher by 30% during that time frame.

In a mostly quiet Wednesday session, Asian stocks rose overnight along with European bourses, which were led higher by miners after Rio Tinto posted higher profits for the first time in three years and a bigger-than-expected dividend, while India’s Sensex extended declines after the central bank unexpectedly left rates unchanged. US futures were little changed as oil continued to fall after API reported a huge inventory build in the last week.

For those following the progression, and most recently - unwind - of the Trump reflation narrative, below are some critical observations from Charlie McElligott, head of cross-asset strategy at RBC.

Big Picture: Narrative Reset

Heading into Monday's session, the S&P had gone for 34 consecutive trading sessions in which it hadn't experienced an intraday move greater than 1%: according to the WSJ's Market Data Group, this was the longest such streak going back over two decades, to 1995. And, following the Monday close, the market made history when it ended yet another day by being confined to a 1% trading range. This made it 35 consecutive sessions without an intraday move of 1% or more.