United States

One day after the Senate almost unanimously passed a bill to impose new sanctions on Russia, an unexpected outcry against the US decision emerged from two of America's closest allies, Germany and Austria, who yesterday slammed the new sanctions and accused the U.S. of having ulterior motives in seeking to enforce the energy blockade, which they said is trying to help American natural gas suppliers at the expense of their Russian rivals.

Two days after Trump ceded unilateral authority on Afghan troop deployments to the Department of Defense, the Pentagon wasted on time and according to AP, the Pentagon will send 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan to support existing forces and in hopes of breaking a stalemate in a war that has now been passed on to a third U.S. President. The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.

Today is quad-witching opex Friday, and according to JPM, some $1.3 trillion in S&P future will expire. Traditionally quad days are associated with a rise in volatility and a surge in volumes although in light of recent vol trends and overnight markets, today may be the most boring quad-witching in recent history: global stocks have again rebounded from yesterday's tech-driven losses as European shares rose 0.6%, wiping out the week's losses.

Two days ago, JPM's head quant made a striking observation: "Passive and Quantitative investors now account for ~60% of equity assets (vs. less than 30% a decade ago). We estimate that only ~10% of trading volumes originates from fundamental discretionary traders." In short, markets are now "a quant's world", with carbon-based traders looking like a slow anachronism from a bygone era.

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investments,